Chương 1: An Unfamiliar Ceiling

Chapter One An Unfamiliar Ceiling Arnold had once lived on Earth. Ever since childhood, he had dreamed of becoming a game programmer. After years of study, that dream had finally carried him into one of the largest game development companies in the world. He had believed that a bright future awaited him there, one filled with opportunities to create the games he had always imagined. Reality had proven far less generous.

For six long years, Arnold had been forced to develop one senseless project after another under the demands of planning and marketing departments that barely understood the first thing about programming. By the time those six years came to an end, the frustration had worn away every trace of loyalty he had once felt toward the company. Using the money he had saved, the experience he had accumulated, and the connections he had formed throughout his career, Arnold resigned and founded a small game studio of his own.

The road that followed was naturally difficult, but his employees had gathered around him out of genuine passion. Together, they developed an independent game on a modest budget and achieved a respectable level of success. That first success attracted considerable investment. Arnold hired additional employees and launched a new project on a scale far beyond anything his young company had attempted before. As was often the case with ambitious projects, however, the schedule refused to follow the original plan.

Fifteen days before the promised delivery date of the alpha build, the entire studio entered an endless cycle of overtime. The final week became a merciless stretch of sleepless nights, frantic corrections, and desperate attempts to keep the project from collapsing beneath its own weight. At last, after working through the night for seven consecutive days, Arnold completed the alpha version.

"Haa... this is killing me." He leaned back from his desk and stretched while staring at the completed build on his monitor. The moment the tension left his body, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion descended upon him. He wanted nothing more than to return home and fall into bed, but there was no longer enough strength in his body to move so much as a single finger. If only his stamina had been a little better... It was hardly surprising that such a thought came to him after an entire week without proper sleep.

Then again, what kind of person could endure seven nights of nonstop work without collapsing? With that pointless question lingering at the edge of his fading consciousness, Arnold finally surrendered his weight to the desk. Final wish received. You will be reincarnated as a member of the race possessing the strongest physique. Just as his eyes closed, Arnold thought he heard a strange voice whispering beside his ear. The words were so absurd that a faint laugh escaped him before he could stop it.

If wishes were truly being granted, a week of rest in the countryside would have been enough. Somewhere peaceful and remote, preferably without electricity. A place so isolated that no one from work could reach him even if they tried. Nothing but untouched nature and absolute silence. This request is consistent with the contents of your final wish. More nonsense followed the idle fantasy drifting through his exhausted mind. It had to be an auditory hallucination.

After staying awake for an entire week, hearing voices was probably the least surprising thing that could have happened. Was this sleep paralysis? That was the first thought that crossed Arnold's mind when awareness returned. For some reason, his body refused to move. He could not even open his eyes, much less lift an arm or shift his weight. Worse still, a tremendous pressure had been bearing down upon his entire body from the moment he woke. Was it because he had fallen asleep at the desk?

Remembering the position in which he had lost consciousness only strengthened his suspicion. Convinced that he was trapped in an episode of sleep paralysis, Arnold gathered every fragment of strength he possessed and fought to wake himself. His eyes remained sealed. The pressure wrapped around him like countless ropes, binding every part of his body while he struggled helplessly against it. He had no idea how long that desperate battle continued. Then, without warning, the force crushing him disappeared.

An indescribable sense of liberation swept through his entire body. He wanted to shout in triumph.

"Waaah! Waaah!" Instead, an infant's cry burst uncontrollably from his mouth.

"Krahaha! Now that is a sturdy male!"

"Crying that loudly the moment he is born? Give him fifteen years, and he will become a great strength to the tribe. Keh keh!." While his disobedient mouth continued wailing at full force, unfamiliar voices rang out around him in a language he could not understand. Arnold forced his eyes open to identify the source of the strange noise. Several terrifying figures were staring down at him. Terrifying was, perhaps, too gentle a word. Their enormous bodies were packed with muscle and covered in strange tattoos.

Their broad, angular faces might have been called wild by a generous observer, but to Arnold they looked downright monstrous. Large fangs protruded from their mouths, giving them a predatory appearance closer to wolves than ordinary humans. Most alarming of all was their skin. Every one of them was green. Orcs? Creatures Arnold had only ever seen inside games were now gathered around him, peering down with unmistakable interest.

"Oh? He stopped crying." One of the orcs leaned closer, his broad smile revealing even more of his fangs.

"Krahaha! He really is destined for greatness." Arnold could not understand a single word they were saying. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. They could not possibly be discussing how delicious he looked, could they? No. That had to be it. Those smiles clearly belonged to predators that had just discovered their prey. This had to be a dream. Desperate to deny the scene before him, Arnold squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.

"Keh keh. Look at the little fellow blinking." The orcs were still there. Only then did Arnold notice that something was wrong with his own body as well. He had been too distracted by the surrounding orcs to realize it at first, but his arms, legs, and torso had all shrunk to the size of a newborn child. His skin was also the same pale mint-green shade as the creatures gathered around him. The strange voice he had heard before closing his eyes returned to his memory. Final wish received.

You will be reincarnated as a member of the race possessing the strongest physique. The voice had unmistakably spoken of reincarnation. Had he died? There was no other reasonable conclusion. Arnold had died and been born again, most likely after working himself to death at his desk. The emptiness of his former life suddenly seemed almost laughable. A weary sigh tried to escape his lips.

"Uaaah..." Unfortunately, a newborn's mouth could not even produce a proper sigh.

"Oh? Is he trying to speak already?" Another orc shook his head at the suggestion.

"How could a child who was just born already know how to speak?" Their voices dragged Arnold's attention away from his thoughts and back toward his new reality. Dying was miserable enough. Why did he have to become an orc as well? Still, there was no one else to blame. In his final moments, Arnold had been the fool who wished for a healthier body. He should have wished to be reborn as a wealthy man with no need to work. And so began the life of a modern man reborn within an orc tribe.

Roughly one month had passed since Arnold was reborn as an orc. The estimate was necessarily vague because there was no reliable way to measure the passage of time. The place in which he now lived possessed neither clocks nor calendars. Expecting such things was almost laughable. His new home was little more than a crude hut constructed from wood and straw. The mysterious voice had kept every part of its promise with remarkable generosity.

Arnold had been delivered into an entirely natural environment without a trace of electricity. The cursed orc settlement was a primitive hunter-gatherer society. There were no blankets or mattresses. Leaves and animal hides had been spread across the bare dirt floor like ragged scraps, not to provide comfort, but merely to keep the cold rising from the ground from seeping directly into the body. After spending several days in the hut, Arnold eventually became accustomed to the miserable sleeping conditions.

There was another problem to which he could not adapt nearly as easily.

"Oh, my little Karath is awake." A female orc approached with an affectionate smile. She was the orc who had given birth to him in this world. In other words, she was Karath's biological mother. Finding the infant squirming on the floor adorable, she bent down and lifted him into her arms. Karath's body immediately shuddered. It was not because his mother's face was frightening. Their appearance had led him to assume that orcs were monsters at first, but they were not truly monstrous beings.

If they had been, the mysterious voice would probably not have described them as a race. The adult male orcs who occasionally visited the hut certainly possessed intimidating faces and enormous physiques, but the same could not be said of the females. Female orcs were simply broader and more heavily built than human women, with somewhat angular faces. Their most unusual features were their mint-green skin and the small, sharp fangs that protruded from between their lips.

None of that was responsible for Karath's trembling. The smell was. The body odor drifting from his mother was powerful enough to twist his nose. In a primitive hunter-gatherer society, the concepts of hygiene and cleanliness were practically nonexistent. His mother had likely gone at least a month without bathing, and an indescribable fragrance radiated from every part of her body.

"My son is trembling again. Are you cold today too?" Mistaking his convulsions for discomfort from the cold, Karath's mother pulled him tightly against her chest.

"Auuu! Aoh! Auu... ah..." Surrounded by the overwhelming scent rising from her warm embrace, Karath let out several cries of pure suffering before losing consciousness. Perhaps he had merely fallen asleep. He preferred to believe he had fainted. Roughly three months had passed since Karath's reincarnation. A faint groan escaped him as he shifted restlessly across the floor of the hut. He desperately wanted a bath. During those three months, he had not bathed properly even once.

His body had been cleaned only four times, and even those occasions had consisted of little more than wiping his skin with collected rainwater. Calling that a bath would have been generous. After living as a modern human for thirty-four years, the constant layer of grime covering his body was almost impossible to endure. Yet the discomfort was no longer the most serious problem. What happened to being given the strongest body?

Growing up in an environment so completely removed from sanitation had pushed his infant body to its limit. His head spun violently, heat burned through every limb, and cold sweat gathered across his skin. Even through the haze clouding his thoughts, the desire to wash himself with cold water refused to disappear.

"Waaah..." His newborn mouth remained incapable of expressing anything more meaningful than a cry.

"Karath!" The female orc sleeping beside him immediately reacted to the sound. His mother sat upright in alarm and began touching his forehead, chest, and limbs as she desperately examined his condition.

"Oh, no. My son!" Karath had not yet learned to read orc expressions properly, but there was no mistaking what he saw in her eyes at that moment. Fear, urgency, and unmistakable maternal love. Her emotions were genuine, and her actions soon proved it. She lifted Karath's feverish body and hurried toward an earthenware jar filled with collected rainwater. Scooping the water out with her bare hands, she repeatedly poured it over him in an attempt to lower his temperature.

Afterward, she retrieved several unfamiliar fruits and bundles of herbs stored inside the hut. She crushed them against a stone until they became a fine paste, then carefully fed him small amounts at a time. The long night continued. She ground herbs and fruit finely enough for an infant to swallow, placed small portions into Karath's mouth, then returned to the jar to sprinkle more rainwater across his burning body. When the jar finally ran dry, she rushed to another hut to beg for more water.

When the herbs and fruit were exhausted, she ran barefoot into the darkness to gather additional supplies. Fever and dizziness reduced Karath's vision to a pale blur, but the sight of his mother's devotion burned itself clearly into his memory. Several hours passed.

"Kieeeek!" The roar of some distant beast echoed from beyond the hut. Orange light began seeping through the gaps in the crude wooden walls as dawn approached. At last, the fever that had tormented Karath's fragile body throughout the night began to fade.

"Haa..." His mother released a long breath of relief. The first thought to surface in Karath's mind as he watched her was absurdly practical. That had been an incredibly primitive treatment. Their methods could not begin to compare with modern medicine. There was no guarantee that the herbs and fruit she had fed him were even suitable for his symptoms. In a modern hospital, any physician witnessing such treatment might have demanded to know whether the woman was trying to kill her child.

Even so, gratitude slowly spread through Karath's exhausted mind. The orc before him had done everything within her power to keep him alive. No, she was not merely an orc. She was his mother, and the love contained within her desperate efforts had reached him without distortion.

"Auu..." The struggle against illness had exhausted both his body and mind. The moment the fever subsided, an irresistible wave of sleep descended upon his infant body. Reassured by the sight of her son drifting into peaceful sleep, Karath's mother wrapped him warmly in her arms and closed her own eyes. Karath finally stopped resisting the truth. He had already been reborn as an orc. There was no known way to reverse what had happened, nor any reason to believe such a method existed.

Yet the knowledge accumulated throughout his previous life remained intact. More importantly, Arnold had lived as a developer, and developers were the sort of people who created whatever did not yet exist. If this primitive hunter-gatherer society was unbearable, then Karath would simply have to transform it into a world in which he could live. He had always loved creating things. The joy of turning ideas into reality was the very reason he had become a game developer.

Even while enjoying a stable position at a major company, he had walked away because he refused to spend the rest of his life creating games he did not believe in. If that determination had once driven him to create the games he wanted, then perhaps it could now drive him to create the world he wanted. The mysterious being responsible for his reincarnation had even gifted him the strongest physique among all races. With such a foundation, the challenge no longer seemed entirely impossible.

Karath's breathing gradually softened. Held within his mother's warm embrace and surrounded by her powerful scent, the newborn orc fell asleep while nurturing an ambition far greater than his tiny body. Before attempting anything else, however, he made one firm decision. One way or another, Karath would create soap. ```