With time, my other senses began to awaken from their long slumber, flooding my mind with a torrent of new and bewildering information. The most prominent sensation was a gentle, constant pulse of warmth, a source of sustenance that felt as if it were being delivered through the very spot where a belly button would be. This strange, nourishing feeling was the first truly concrete thing I had experienced in what felt like an eternity. With this singular piece of data, combined with a vast, if hazy, knowledge base from a life I could barely remember, the conclusion was inescapable and profound:
'So I have reincarnated... as a baby.'
The thought carried a mix of awe and disbelief. I knew of this phenomenon, of course. My mind, I recalled, was filled with a lifetime of stories from novels, anime, and manga. If my memories served me right, escaping into those fictional worlds had been my primary source of entertainment after I retired and my health began to fail. I had become a recluse, a full-fledged hikkikomori otaku, finding solace in the fantastical. This, I reasoned, must be the universe's bizarre sense of irony.
But the "unborn baby" theory didn't hold up for long. My senses of touch and hearing soon activated, and the details they provided contradicted everything I knew about a healthy womb. I could feel a light breeze on my skin, a gentle caress that no mother's belly could provide. Distant animal sounds, sometimes a roar, sometimes a gentle rustle, echoed through what I assumed was the air around me. This was certainly not the muffled, protected environment of a fetus. It was baffling. Who were my parents, to have me in such a place? Was this some strange, wild birth ritual? Who was I to judge their eccentricities?
I don't know how much time passed in this state. It could have been days, weeks, or even months. Slowly, agonizingly, my control over my body grew. I could feel my limbs now, a thrilling, if clumsy, realization. Yet, my eyes remained stubbornly sealed. I was a puppet with no strings to the world of light.
I also realized that what I had been calling "unconsciousness" was simply the deep sleep required by an infant's developing mind. My brief periods of lucidity were followed by long stretches of deep slumber. According to my vague general knowledge, babies needed a lot of sleep.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of darkness, I managed to force my eyelids apart. The sight that greeted me was so breathtakingly beautiful, so utterly fantastical, that I knew with a certainty born of wonder that I would remember it for the rest of my existence.
The sky above was an impossible, crystalline blue, a perfect expanse of color. Golden shafts of sunlight, thick and palpable, pierced through the dense canopy of trees high above, dappling the ground in a mosaic of light and shadow. The playful streams of light caught on the bright green leaves, making them shimmer and glow like polished emeralds under the sun. The forest was an endless ocean of vibrant green, stretching as far as my newborn eyes could see.
And then, I saw them. What appeared to be gigantic ivory pillars jutted out of the ground, covered in a soft, verdant moss, rising hundreds of meters into the sky. They were like the petrified bones of some ancient, long-forgotten giant, a testament to a world far grander than anything I had ever known. The fresh, earthy forest air filled my lungs, a soothing balm to my bewildered mind. The chirping of insects and the gentle song of birds echoed through the trees like a natural symphony, filling my ears with a melody that completed the otherworldly beauty of the scene.
I tilted my head, my neck wobbly and weak, and in my field of vision, I saw it—a giant slug, an impossible creature of immense size, resting peacefully right next to my humble abode. My mind, unable to process the sheer absurdity of it all, simply gave up. I went unconscious again, and this time, there was no doubt. I was out cold.
(Author note- And so the MC died, and you can watch Naruto, the anime, for the rest of the story. Just kidding)
MC POV
Life is full of unexpected things, you know.
Like I had this weird dream or maybe nightmare where I was a baby, born god knows how and where; yet somehow alive in the middle of a forest full of gigantic trees, with bones taller than skyscrapers jutting out of the ground filled with roars of animals, without a source of apparent sustenance living right next to a giant slug the size of which I could not estimate.
Weird, right? Bou behold, now that I am awake I will no longer be haunted by nightmares and when I open my eyes, I will be back to my rightful place; in a bed either dying of terminal illness or in a comfy crib in my mansion.
Why a mansion, you ask? Because every reincarnated baby has a mansion, I know that for a fact that I will have a mansion too, and so, taking a deep breath, I opened my eyes.
'I am still here, so is the slug, and the forest, and the animal roars.'
I had this thought after a minute of opening my eyes, as I felt despair creeping in on me.
Why is this happening? Reincarnation doesn't go like this, and for those wondering, I have been awake for hours, and I have tried everything I could think of to look for a headway in my current situation only to be denied of any hope by this brutal reality.
I've tried everything from trying to contact my patron god, making wishes, calling the system, hell I've even tried to go super saiyan and wakening my dormant powers and finally concluded that I have no system, no powers, no advisor in my mind and I certainly can't communicate with gods which means I have no golden finger or the privilege of the standard reincarnation cheat package but the thing that hurts the most is that most likely I have no family.
Why you ask? Because I am in the middle of freaking nowhere as a baby, which means I was most likely abandoned in the middle of here, wherever I am.
I mean, I don't remember many memories or feelings from my past life, but that desire for family is the one desire that I seem to have inherited.After I had all these thoughts, my baby body seemed to have gotten tired as I fell asleep once again.
I woke up once again and after a peaceful(?) sleep I had to calmed down to some extent. I started to take in my surroundings, and if I looked objectively, the environment was beautiful; the forest was scenic, and there was a beautiful blue lake sparkling in the sunlight, giving a peaceful ambience on the side opposite of 'the slug'.
Now, as much as I want to avoid this topic, we certainly have to address the elephant in the room or the slug opposite to the lake in my case, as both the elephant and the slug have similar sizes.
Now I am making my observations as objective as possible THE SLUG is certainly good looking- for a slug- it is pure white in colour with a stripe of blue or maybe cyan (I am not a colour expert) on the side from where I can see it appears to have two protruding on this side of the face so maybe a total of four, Oh the upper protruding shook and it turned to look at me, now I can count all four.
....HUH…..
WAIT A MINUTE!!!
It's looking at me, oh it noticed me and it started crawling towards me…. OH SHIT! OH SHIT! OH SHIT!
It seems like this is it for me, well here's the end of my new reincarnated life a toast to all the readers beyond the fourth wall from me.
Adios amigos!