Drug-Eating Genius Mage - Chapter 1

“Lenok, wake up!”

Despite the harsh shouts that shook his ears, he tossed and turned, rubbing his unblinking eyes.

It was an unconscious action, but the voice did not speak twice.

slam!

He opened his eyes as he rolled off the bed with an intense shock that seemed like his jaw would fall off.

A thick, furry behemoth, blood dripping from its face, was looking down at him with bloodshot eyes.

The giant growled low as he trampled his face with the boots he was wearing.

“It is work time. Run to the parts room right now. Got it?”

“…..All right.”

A hoarse voice that surprised even oneself.

As soon as he heard the answer, he strode out of the room.

Only then did he find time to look around, clutching his tingling cheek.

A small room full of simple beds covered with dirty sheets. About 10 people were staring at him with pitiful eyes.

“Stupid child. I’m asleep without even knowing the supervisor came…”

“Leave it alone. You know very well that it’s not long before you turn around. Knowing that, the supervisor didn’t even slap you on the cheek.”

“Well, I might really die if I beat him up.”

They chatted among themselves like that, then got up and left him and disappeared somewhere.

He was listening to the people in a daze, then raised his hands and groped himself.

A skinny body with palpable ribs. Forearms thin like tree branches and calves with veins intact.

The body of an invalid who was completely different from the body he had remembered for the rest of his life existed under his head.

“…….”

He staggered up and realized everything only after standing in front of a small mirror hanging in the corner of a room filled with musty air.

The image of a young man clutching his swollen cheek in a broken mirror was very similar to the appearance of the third character he created through the monitor.

“Lenok… it was.”

A character created just to enjoy the game without any meaning or value.

That insignificant body he hadn’t even given a proper name for, was all he had now.

Lennok was thrown into a new world without even a word of complaint.

Awakening

Kooung!

“Move quickly!”

The supervisor shouts loudly while busily wandering around the vast parts room.

Crudely assembled metal parts were scattered on the endlessly rotating conveyor belt.

“It’s time for the union members to collect the products. How long are you planning to procrastinate!”

As the furry giant yelled at the workers with bloodshot eyes, the hands of those standing in front of the belt quickened slightly.

The giant, not satisfied with that, swung the small horsewhip in his hand and hit two or three workers standing nearby before turning his back as if his anger had been relieved.

“If you can’t make it on time, you better be prepared! I have no intention of putting garbage that can’t even keep up with the quota!!”

Lennok, who had been watching it from a distance, turned his gaze back to the piece of metal in his hand.

Three days have passed since he woke up in this unknown parts factory called ‘Factory’.

Still knowing nothing, Lennok got used to the monotonous factory routine surprisingly quickly.

They get up before the sun rises, work until they collapse from exhaustion, and before they go to sleep, they receive a bowl of porridge worse than food waste.

The labor that takes time all day is to assemble scattered metal parts and put them on a conveyor belt.

There was nothing Lennok could do but agree to this monotonous routine that he didn’t even need to understand.

Even when he tries to ask questions, the workers stationed around him stubbornly refuse to speak to him.

It had only been a day before they noticed that the way they looked at Lennok was no different than looking at a dead body.

“Ha ha ha….”

In the poorly ventilated parts room, the workers’ sweat and stench mix and form steam that hovers on the ceiling.

Not being able to breathe fresh air, Lennok’s body quickly became short of breath and the heat spread.

If nothing else, the sense of alienation with this body, which was so different from his old self, was terribly tormenting Lennok.

The hellish hard labor that makes you feel like you’re going to run out of breath at any moment continues for over ten hours without a break.

The good news was that when Lennok stopped assembling the intermediate parts, others didn’t criticize him.

The supervisor also clicked his tongue when he saw Lennok’s pale face, and seemed unwilling to waste his labor force by touching his dying body.

From the moment Lennok noticed it, he worked on tricks little by little, and somehow managed to hold on until the end of his working hours.

After an eternity of working hours, Lennok, who receives a bowl of dry porridge as scheduled, finishes it in an instant and goes to bed.

I closed my eyes, staring at the dark ceiling, but my consciousness was still clear.

It was insomnia.

“Damn it…”

It’s already been three days since I couldn’t sleep properly.

Where this terrible insomnia came from, Lennok had a rough idea.

One of the many penalties he put on when setting up the character. Insomnia, which has reached a kind of characteristic, is tormenting him.

Even more grim was the fact that insomnia was not the only penalty attached to this body.

All sorts of diseases and symptoms that innately weaken his body are eating away at Lennok and dragging him down.

How long can you last?

What was certain was that the time given to him was not that long.

I didn’t think that my body, which had been weakened to the limit, would be able to endure for a long time in the arduous labor environment.

I thought about it for three days, but the conclusion was decided from the beginning.

‘I have to escape from here.’

Whether he withers to death in a factory or gets caught and dies while running away, it’s just the same ending for Lennok.

I had no intention of turning the stench-filled parts room into a graveyard.

Fortunately, not everything was against Lennok.

Perhaps because he was already being treated like a dying man, Lennok had less control than the other workers, and the other workers didn’t care much about what he was doing.

If you can make good use of this point and figure out the structure of the factory, you should be able to devise an escape route.

Besides, the most important thing is that this body is not useless and not just weak.

In this world, if Lennok’s body has various penalties including insomnia, on the contrary, he will have the same talent as Lennok.

Magical talent imbued with all kinds of bad traits. The quality he had filled to the limit lies dormant in Lennok’s body.

If that talent could be saved somehow, escaping from this factory was not an impossible story.

“…….”

Lennok knew.

In this situation, mentally and physically pushed to the limit due to hard labor and insomnia, calmly organizing the situation and making plans, I know that I am a completely different person than I used to be.

The person he knew was not the kind of person who could keep his senses under these circumstances.

It is probably the result of mental talents such as calmness, concentration, and boldness that he filled in when creating the character.

At that time, it was just an investment in the mental abilities necessary for a wizard, but as a result, it was acting as a driving force that allowed Lenok, who had built three days and nights, to remain sober.

Lenock did not believe in the romantic idea that human mental abilities depended on the soul. Reasonable thinking, cold mind, rational logic are all talents of the body called the brain.

The current mental strength that allowed him to keep his cool was also clearly part of the talent of this weak body.

Clearly recognizing that it is Lennok’s talent, not the old self who pressed the character creation button, will be the first step to overcome the current situation.

I won’t let my guard down for a moment until I get out of this hellish factory.

Lennok forced himself to close his eyes while whipping himself like that.