"This is a bit troublesome. Without this kid, we might be stuck here..."

"Boss, you said there's an unrecorded relic in the 'd33 Wasteland' that even the Wasteland Hunter's Guild doesn't know about, and this broken manor is actually a rare 'cursed space.' Just who is this kid, and what's he doing here?"

"To have those big shots in the inner city exile him and offer a reward to silence him completely, his identity must be extraordinary. It's a pity. We thought we could get some secrets out of him before killing him, which is why we tracked him for so long. We didn't expect to get into so much trouble..."

"Hey... looks like he's not dead yet."

........

"Huff... heh..."

His chest heaving violently, as if awakened from a drowning nightmare, Soren suddenly opened his eyes.

He gasped for air, the intense feeling of suffocation gradually receding.

His vision gradually focused. It was an unfamiliar room.

"Where is this..."

Soren tried to struggle to his feet, but looking down, he found himself securely bound to a wooden chair, unable to move.

A strong smell of blood filled his nostrils. Looking at his condition, it was terrible.

His white linen shirt was stained with blood, with open wounds. Even more terrifying, his hands were each pinned to the chair arms with sharp daggers, scarlet blood flowing freely.

The intense pain from the struggle shot through his nerves like a tide...

"I've been kidnapped?"

Unable to think much about why he woke up to this scene, Soren's eyes fell on the two unfriendly-looking men in the room.

One was a burly, bald man with purple lips and dark circles, the other a skinny, green-haired punk with nose and ear piercings.

They were dressed in black leather jackets and worn leather pants studded with metal, looking like ardent punk enthusiasts.

Of course, the most striking thing was the weapons they carried.

"Guns... is it the mafia?"

Soren turned his head slightly.

The two men had large revolvers holstered at their waists, the gun bodies engraved with ancient and complex runes. The design looked exaggerated, but also vaguely familiar.

What surprised him even more was that the bald man had a strange mechanical arm attached to his right arm.

This mechanical arm had a strong dark industrial style, with almost all the parts exposed to the air. Brass gears, drive rods, mechanical joints, a gas valve with a dashboard, high-pressure pipes... The front of the mechanical arm had a spiral-patterned muzzle and crosshair sight about the size of a fist.

It seemed that this mechanical arm was a handheld, single-soldier cannon.

Most incomprehensible to Soren was that white steam was chugging out of the mechanical arm's exhaust pipe.

"This is... steam-powered machinery?"

Soren frowned slightly, feeling like he was seeing something unbelievable.

In this era, were people still playing with steam machinery, an antique?

He wasn't very frightened, but more puzzled.

Was this a movie shoot?

No!

The sharp pain in his hands told Soren that he had indeed been kidnapped!

........

"I remember clicking on a strange email, everything went black... and then, I woke up here?"

Waking up in a strange place, Soren couldn't make heads or tails of it.

No matter how hard he tried to recall, he had no memory of being "kidnapped."

Soren felt that something was wrong.

He wanted to find more clues, and his gaze fell back on the room.

A dazzling crystal chandelier, exquisitely carved solid wood furniture, rows of gold-lettered books neatly arranged on the bookshelves, and a signed black and white family photo on the wall...

Soren quickly formed a hypothesis: the owner of the house must be a very particular enthusiast of British retro style, or this was originally a European castle.

But if they were so rich, why kidnap him?

The piercing pain from the two sharp daggers pinned in his hands constantly reminded him that the two men were definitely vicious kidnappers.

"These two guys... are kidnappers?"

Soren's pupils focused, and he looked at the two men in the room again.

Whether it was their European faces, their retro equipment, or the steam-powered mechanical arm... everything seemed very strange.

Of course, even stranger was that Soren saw his reflection in the mirror-like chandelier on the ceiling—the appearance of a brown-haired boy with a face full of blood!

"Huh... why do I look different?!"

Soren vaguely guessed that something very strange had happened to him.

Moreover, when he woke up and opened his eyes, he had noticed some strange fluorescent text on his retina.

He blinked, confirming that it was not an illusion.

......

Thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant, and a loud shout pulled Soren back to reality.

"Hey! Kid, I know you're awake, don't fucking play dumb!"

The skinny, mohawked man glared at him fiercely, and said menacingly, "I'll give you one last chance. Honestly tell me how you knew about this relic, and what you're doing here, otherwise..."

As he spoke, the man grabbed the hilt of the dagger piercing Soren's left hand.

"Hiss~"

The excruciating pain, like his flesh was being ground, shot straight to his head. Soren's forehead was instantly covered with cold sweat, and he gasped sharply.

He immediately understood that the two men were "interrogating" him, trying to get something out of him.

Huh...

Interrogation?

Information?

The text on his retina!

In that instant, a flash of insight connected the clues in his mind.

"These guys aren't trying to kidnap me, but the 'original owner' of this body!"

Soren suddenly realized.

Suddenly, a bold idea popped into his mind: "I seem to have... transmigrated?"

Although the idea was outrageous, it was the most logical explanation.

Whether it was the brown-haired boy's body, the two punk-style kidnappers in front of him, or the dialogue he could understand but didn't know what language it was, all proved that this was no longer the original world.

As a seasoned online novel enthusiast, transmigration wasn't something difficult to accept.

After a moment of shock, Soren became even calmer.

Wait...

Did these two guys already kill the original owner once?

........

The original owner was killed, and he transmigrated here. Soren had no illusions.

The kidnappers in front of him were using crippling methods for interrogation. He had no doubt that the two men had no intention of letting him live!

Thinking of this, he frowned slightly, thinking to himself, "It seems I'll die whether I tell the truth or not..."

A certain-death start?

Soren adapted very quickly.

Like playing an immersive horror game, from the beginning, he felt the adrenaline rush.

"If I want to survive, I have to find a way to escape first..."

The malice from the other side was palpable, piercing his nerves more than the wounds on his hands. But this didn't make Soren feel fear or trembling. Instead, it triggered certain stress reactions.

Because of his special confinement experiences in childhood, he had an extraordinary ability to control certain dangerous emotions.

At this moment.

Faced with the threat of death, his body, tensed by the pain, completely relaxed, as if a hidden switch had been turned on. Fear, panic, trembling... all negative emotions disappeared.

A kind of almost numb calmness appeared in Soren's eyes.