Among them all, that one barbarian named Venir was glaring at me. I had a feeling he might jump me and start a fight at any time. But before he could do anything, a different guy cleared his throat.

  “Just how you alive?” he managed, staring like he couldn’t believe it. I recalled his name was Haldrek. He was the only other barbarian besides Ragna who didn’t badmouth me or laugh with the rest of the group, and right now, he looked rather ashamed.

  “...Fought with my all,” I replied, choosing to return respect. Despite that, my voice sounded rough, even to me. I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. Blood smeared across my cheek, but I didn’t care.

  Ragna took a step forward like she wanted to check if I was real. Her hand reached out to feel my face, running a finger across a scar. “...You hurt very bad,” she said, withdrawing her hand. She hid it as her hands clenched, then unclenched.

  “Well, I lived.”

  “How did you escape…?” Her voice was hushed, almost awed.

  When I just shrugged, Haldrek let out a low whistle toward the boars. “Damn. You caught these alone?”

  I just smiled. The rattling in my lungs made it hard to speak more than a few words. Instead, I just locked gazes with each of them in turn. Most looked away quickly, either uneasy or impressed – perhaps both?

  After a tense moment, Ragna barked, “Bring him water!” And a young boy scampered off to fetch a wooden jug.

  Nobody quite knew what to do or say next. Ragna stared at me with a complicated face. The men who had been arguing with her moments before just stared, half in shock, half like they wanted to pretend nothing had happened.

  Finally, a different voice echoed from behind the onlookers. “Now that a hunt worth bragging about.” A tall figure approached, grinning. He looked much older than us, and he carried an ax almost as impressive as the one I inherited from my father. “Surviving Netherwood on your own? You might be tougher than we thought. Fosho blood does not lie.”

  His name was Vorgar, nicknamed the Beast.

  A nasty fighter with a body full of battle scars. One of the most impressive hunters of the tribe, from the same generation as my father. He was covered in tattoos that the younger generation didn’t have yet. He was like an uncle to me, and often he gave his spare meals to me.

  When such an impressive figure boomed out a laugh, the crowd around us was forced to follow, which eased the tension a little. He'd waited until I was standing with the boars at my feet before he spoke up. If he'd defended me while I looked weak, it would have made us both look pathetic. What a culture this was. He only walked in when the evidence was already on the ground. Smart man.

  The attention shifted away from accusations and taunts toward achievement.

  For now, that was enough. I’d delivered a successful hunt, and I was still breathing. Whether the young bastards appreciated it or not, I was here. My gaze flicked to Ragna one last time, who nodded once, like she was relieved to see I’d made it, before looking down in shame.

  I exhaled and let my shoulders sag. The fatigue was catching up to me fast, but thankfully I had stuff to eat now.

  ****

  Half an hour later, I stared at the fire, the embers dancing in the night as the others around me bickered like children over scraps of boar meat.

  “Hey! Off yo’ hands!”

  “No, that mine, mine I said!”

  These damned barbarians… They were jumping around like idiots, speaking in a rough dialect. Their excitement over food was so simple, so raw, it almost felt surreal. Was this really my life now?

  Darwin would have had a field day here – Survival of the fittest – and whatnot.

  I sat there, staring at the meat in front of me. The fire crackled, sending small sparks into the night air as the warmth hit my face.

  “Eh, Thorvyn?” Ragna called as she pointed at the meat in front of me. “You going to eat that, or can I take?”

  Now that I was much calmer, I noticed something weird. She spoke the vowels softer, and somehow, she had an accent despite being from this small tribe. I looked at the hunk of meat resting in front of me – the boar I had brought earlier. It was unseasoned.

  Dammit, should I really eat that? I know I’m hungry, but… I’d seen how they cooked it. It wasn’t sanitary. What kind of diseases could this meat have? I turned back to her, about to ask her if we had something else we could eat, but before I could respond, my stomach growled loudly, betraying me.

  The woman laughed at the sound and looked at me. But just when our eyes met, she flinched. “A-ah… s-sorry,” she mumbled, quickly turning away.

  I wasn’t trying to scare her, but maybe my face looked more intimidating than I thought. It doesn’t matter, I am too hungry to care. With a sigh, I looked at the meat and grabbed it, taking a bite.

  “....!”

  No way…

  Had I been blind my entire life?

  Hunger was the great equalizer. It didn’t care for morality or sophistication and only demanded to be sated…. How could I judge meat based on its seasoning?! It was tasty, regardless of how it was prepared!

  I fully expected it to taste like absolute trash. But it was… good. Surprisingly good.

  I chewed slowly at first, expecting the flavor to turn bitter or gamey at some point, but it never did. It was tender and juicy, the fat melting in my mouth like butter. Damn… This was incredible.

  Hobbes believed life in the state of nature was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Yet, at this moment, it felt strangely complete as my stomach was getting fed. Was he wrong, or was I simply adapting to survive? Already?

  My chewing sped up, and before I knew it, I was devouring the piece in front of me, barely taking time to breathe between bites. Minutes passed in a flash, and I’d not only gobbled the meat in front of me, but I’d also asked for a few more servings.

  It’s not helping my headache though, I realized, rubbing my temple. It’d been a constant since the wave of memory, but I’d overlooked it due to hunger and physical injuries. Now it was coming back stronger.

  "What wrong, Thorvyn?" Ragna asked from my side, her voice low. She took a step closer, her eyes curious as she studied me. It seemed she truly felt guilty for leaving me back there, and was trying to comfort me.

  “...It’s nothing,” I said, watching her stare at me for a moment before she nodded.

  ****

  The camp was active with the gentle crackling of the fire, its warm glow casting dancing shadows across the ground. The jungle whispered in the background, its rustling leaves and distant cries of nocturnal creatures a constant reminder that this was a place untamed by human hands.

  It wasn’t menacing, exactly. More like the island was alive, breathing alongside us.

  The night sky went on forever, and the stars looked close enough to touch. I’d never seen that many back on Earth.

  It was stunning in an almost unnatural way – too clear, too vast. I’d never seen such a beautiful sky back on Earth. The cool night air carried the faint, smoky scent of the communal fire and the earthy aroma of damp soil.

  Around us, the barbarians chattered in low, rough voices, their words blending with the distant sounds of the jungle.

  I sat on a log near the edge of the firelight, staring at the flickering flames as they licked at the wood. My thoughts swirled like the embers drifting into the night, pieces of memories, questions, and confusion tangling together in an overwhelming storm.

  It was probably better to go back to my room and wonder about all this, but I liked the fire. It was warm, and it made me feel safe… I barely noticed the plate of bones on my lap or the occasional sidelong glance from Ragna, seated nearby.

  “Hey,” she called suddenly, breaking the silence and snapping me out of my daze. I blinked slowly and turned to her, startled. She had an annoyed expression, her brows furrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line. “You sure you alright? Do I bring you a healing concoction?”

  I hesitated for a moment, rubbing my temples as the remnants of the headache pulsed faintly behind my eyes. “No, it’s alright. I already had one when I entered. It’s just… Well. My head… It hurts. It’s a terrible headache,” I replied, my voice low.

  “A headak- what?”

  “Ah.” I realized they didn't have the word. “Like, inside my head. My uh, brain, my mind.” I said, still holding my head as the remnants of the pain throbbed.

  In response, Ragna tilted her head in confusion. “I no understand,” she said slowly. "Your mind hurts? Not your body? How?"

  “...Hm.” I didn’t know what to say anymore.

  "Why you use big words now?" Ragna asked.

  "Force of habit," I replied.

  “Habit?” She blinked. “What habit? You mean you hit things outta habit?”

  “Well, you...” I stopped myself and sighed. "You know what? Yes. Exactly that."

  I didn’t blame the girl, she didn’t seem to resent me. I recalled how simple-minded they were from Thorvyn’s memories. Did they never experience a headache before? I guess to them, pain was only an external concept. Cuts, bruises, broken bones. Something you could point at and fix.

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  The idea that your own head could turn against you probably didn't come up much when your daily routine involved punching boars. Who knows.

  Shaking my head, I waved it off. “Let’s continue what we were doing.”

  “Maybe,” she ignored me and started humming, “Want me to crack your skull? Might fix pain.”

  “No.” I raised my hands in defence. Ragna blinked at me before shrugging, returning to watching the fire as if nothing had happened.

  I wore a scowl for a few seconds. I felt weird. It was as if they were just kids, kids who killed with a smile on their faces. These barbarians were strong but not exactly sharp. I stared at the fire again, trying to settle the storm inside my head.

  Was I really… Thorvyn now? A barbarian.

  And what kind of world was this outside the island? Was it filled with more barbarians like these fools? Or maybe more civilized people somewhere far off? Was the place this body’s mother was from civilized? Or was she also a barbarian from some distant land? The thought of it tugged at me, and I couldn’t push it away.

  I needed answers, but I didn’t have any. For now, I was stuck here.

  I leaned back, staring up at the night sky. Stars twinkled brightly overhead, more than I’d ever seen back home. The pollution had always hidden them back on Earth, but here it was so clear, so… magical.

  Instead of feeling anxious at this strange new place, I felt… relief. I felt annoyed, too, but somehow, relief was a part of my emotions.

  It was odd. It wasn’t as if I hated my life like those isekai protagonists to feel this way. Even if my old man made a stupid decision, I still cared for him. Kind of. So, it didn’t make sense why I felt relieved. Why this place felt… fitting for me.

  The air itself felt like it belonged to me, prompting many questions. I died in my grandfather’s old house. A supposedly haunted house… and that axe back then...

  [Mana Signature Confirmed.]

  [Transmigration Granted.]

  What did it mean when it said it confirmed my mana signature? Why was it confirmed? Earlier, I’d hoped thinking about it properly would give me answers, but I still came up with nothing. All this was too confusing and too mysterious. The only fact was that I was in a whole different world now.

  But I wanted to look for answers. If possible, I wanted to go back. The odd sense of familiarity aside, as well as the attraction of this world’s magic, I had friends and family back on Earth. I wanted to return. But where could I find answers?

  I was a barbarian now… or at least in the body of one, and all around me were more barbarians, loud and savage and not much help with cosmic questions. I doubted they had any answers to my questions. Then… did the world outside this island have answers?

  Perhaps a civilized kingdom had some dimensional knowledge to send me back. No, even if they didn’t, I wanted to find a civilized place. And live there. Not here.

  That thought made me curious about the outside world again. What kind of world had I ended up in? Was this really an underdeveloped world, stuck in some primitive era? I was happy to receive these memories, but this island was isolated from the world. This barbarian Thorvyn… me… didn’t know anything useful.

  Were there kingdoms and empires outside? I knew there was magic. But Demons? Gods? As I wondered that, a voice suddenly cut through the air.

  “Oh, younglings! You’re eating well.”

  I turned, my eyes landing on an old man with graying hair and missing teeth. The others around me looked up, too. He hobbled toward the fire, leaning on a cane made of twisted wood. His skin was weathered, but his eyes were sharp, even in his old age. He was dressed in animal skins, with beads and bones dangling from his neck and wrists.

  He had white hair too, although I recalled they were black during his youth. He was just an old man. The elder, Morvak the Shaman. I also recalled that he was one of the few barbarians who’d seen the outside world before.

  “Great hunt, but be sure to rest well tonight~” the old man said, his voice humming with a strange melody. “Your coming-of-age ceremony is in a few days; you should be in top condition before that. The Chieftain will announce something important this year! Ahh, even this old man feels somewhat jealous of your generation. But, heh. Life can only be understood backward but must be lived forward.”

  I blinked, his words catching in my mind. Isn’t that Kierkegaard’s quote? How does he… It was probably a coincidence. Perhaps a philosopher parallel to Kierkegaard existed here. I wouldn’t be surprised. More importantly, did he say Coming of age?

  How old was this body? That status screen said 17. Damn, given it’s a primitive tribe, I’d think their coming of age would be a few years early. Perhaps it represented something else than what I was used to?

  Because despite not being ‘aged enough,’ I was already hunting deadly wolves.

  "The all-powerful System has evolved, younglings,” he suddenly continued, looking up at the sky with an oddly envious look on his face. “And it continues to evolve further. No longer do men and women merely gain strength through combat. In the civilized lands, those damned Empires and Sultanate, they’ve been practising this for a long time. We should too. Then perhaps one day, we’ll earn capabilities beyond what we simple barbarians comprehend."

  It felt like there was a lot to process there, but most importantly, civilized lands. There was hope! “Uh, great shaman,” I called, standing up, making him turn to me. “I had some questions…”

  “Oh, no you don’t! I am not telling you fools anything about the ceremony now, after you refused to attend my classes all these years. Stay away from me until the ceremony ends, brat,” he said, and quickly walked away.

  “Um…” I rubbed the back of my head. Many thoughts swirled in my head as the old man shuffled away, humming to himself. He left me to sit there under the stars, the words repeating in my head. They continued even when I fell asleep, bouncing in my thoughts.

  The Coming of Age Ceremony.

  ****

  The cold morning air nipped at my skin, dragging me from an uneasy sleep. The faint light of dawn crept through the gaps in the thatched walls of the old hut, casting long, jagged shadows over the packed dirt floor.

  My body stirred reluctantly, weighed down by the ache of muscles not my own. “Argh, where is this…?” I asked out loud as my vision cleared. Only a few seconds later did memories of yesterday resurface. I went silent, staring at the air.

  For a moment, I lay still, staring at the crude wooden ceiling above me, wondering if I could feign death and avoid the absurdity of this existence.

  Then, a gurgling noise from my stomach shattered that illusion.

  Mother Nature called for me. It was not the poetic, "oh, let's admire the sunrise" kind of nature, not at all. Instead, it was the "find a bush or regret it" type. I groaned, sitting up in bed, the rough animal skins falling from my shoulders.

  "Hmm… Now, where's the washroom?" I muttered to myself, looking around, only to recall where I was. "Fuck." Not even a semblance of modern civilization here.

  Reluctantly recalling this body’s memory, I slowly grabbed the crude fur cloak draped over a corner of the hut and threw it around my shoulders. The ax rested nearby, but I left it. If I needed an ax to handle my morning business, I had bigger problems.

  Ten minutes later I emerged from the jungle, having learned two things.

  First, philosophy taught me to question existence, but it never prepared me for questioning which leaves were safe to wipe with. Second, I had to leave this island.

  I must.

  ****

  Back on Earth, I’d spent hours pondering the nature of existence, debating whether life had meaning or if we created our own. Here, though, the answer seemed much simpler: life’s purpose was survival. It was primal, raw, and stripped of pretension.

  People here didn’t care about luxury. In this land, life was far too difficult for that. Strip away the noise of modernity, and what remained? Eat, sleep, fight, shit. The basic pillars of existence. Maslow’s hierarchy at its finest.

  Bullshit.

  I could appreciate these barbarians to a degree, away from the disgusting politics that civilization was built upon, but I didn’t want to share their misery. Somehow, the relief I felt last night about this place vanished into thin air by the time I returned to the village.

  When I emerged from the jungle, the sun had begun to rise, painting the horizon in hues of orange and gold. The village stirred to life, and the sounds of morning routines broke the quiet. Smoke curled from chimneys, and the smell of roasting meat drifted through the air, making my stomach growl again.

  “Haah, I can’t possibly live here.” I was a modern man from the 21st century. How could I survive without proper toiletries?! Holy fuck.

  This was one of the things I was scared of joining the military at first. If I got sent to missions in Afghanistan or something, I was scared I might have to encounter these. I’d seen enough footage and heard enough stories to know what “field living” really meant. That… was exactly what had happened.

  I don’t know how I’d made it that far. Even so, I didn’t get to have any action. Between my condition and my weak body, they kept me behind desks and training halls until they finally discharged me. Still, the fear stuck. You don’t need to get shot at to hate mud and cold food.

  I…

  I had to leave this island.

  Somehow, I had to find a way to escape.

  It shouldn’t be impossible, I think. This was a tropical island, so they had to have boats for fishing. At least makeshift ones. Or else, I could make a boat myself using the banana trees nearby. That’d be easy enough… I recalled a show I used to watch on TV back in the day. Bear Grylls showed me how to do it…

  “Haha, I’m fucked,” I cursed.

  The problem was the distance – the directions. I didn’t know how far the closest land was and which direction it was in. Thorvyn’s memories didn’t have any information of ever leaving this place. Perhaps that was one of the things related to Coming of Age?

  Maybe only adults were allowed to leave. But for all I knew, there could be no land across thousands of miles around this island. That would be terrible.

  But I believed in ‘if there’s a will, there’s a way.’ So, I’d just have to ask around for useful information before deciding if giving up was the only choice. I had hope, to be honest. For example, according to Thorvyn’s memories, the shaman had gone to the outside world before. In fact, my father had done the same. He left the tribe with the shaman, and when they returned, my father was carrying me in his hand.

  His wife, this body’s mother, was nowhere to be seen. Nobody knew who she was, except for probably the shaman. But I wasn’t really curious about that.

  No wait. I stopped on my path and frowned. Shouldn’t I be curious? Since Thorvyn’s father looked just like my own father, then could it be that his mother…

  My heart beat a little faster.

  All of a sudden, the trivial complaints about modern luxury seemed pointless. All of a sudden, an incredibly huge weight of hope bloomed in my heart. I swallowed.

  I hadn’t seen my mum in a long time; it’d been a decade since she passed. However, if this was a parallel world as I thought, could the mothers be the same person? In that case, did she have any answers regarding this isekai?

  It wasn’t that far-fetched of a thought when I pondered about it.

  Here, my father was dead, but back on Earth, he was alive. Not that it meant everyone dead there was alive here, but that it wouldn’t be weird if this body’s mother was alive here. She might be somewhere out there, waiting for me to find her. I swallowed my saliva.

  I felt my breath quickening. I suddenly found myself with a goal at hand.

  …I should try to look for her after leaving. No, I must. But first, I have to find a way to leave this rock.

  With a determined breath, I decided to ask for help from the shaman to learn where to find my mother. Hopefully, he knew the answer and would cooperate.

  “Oi, is that you Thorvyn! You up early!” Some barbarian yelled, almost startling me out of my thoughts. I turned to see an older man butchering some weird, overgrown chicken. That thing looked tastier than the boars I had last night. “Why you standing there like a dumbass, brat. You look like you saw a ghost!”

  “Yeah, hey…” I waved at him, and he waved back exaggeratedly with a broad grin. I ignored him and continued walking to my hut.

  I couldn’t walk for more than ten breaths before someone else yelled at me, “Oy, you!” It was a voice I recognized.

  I found Haldrek when I turned.

  He grinned, waving at me with his spear in hand. “Thorvyn! Let’s hang out later at night, ye? Your boars were tasty! So let’s have some toddy and play games!”

  Games?, I forced a smile, nodding back at him. “Sure thing,” I replied. Since I’d not only returned alive, I’d also brought food, a few barbarians were treating me well. Although Haldrek was mostly doing It because he felt bad for leaving me, I was pretty sure.

  This respect wouldn’t last if I showed failure again, but he was trying to create friendship. He had an easy-going, barbarian cheerfulness… it wasn't bad.

  “Oh wow, so our hunting hero Thorvyn’s coming too…” Venir said from nearby, his expression shifting as his eyes locked with mine. “I can’t wait for night.”

  “....” I stared at him, frowning.

  I suddenly looked forward to the night.