Have you ever worked a manual labour job?

  He raised his arms high, holding a pickaxe.

  Ever pulled your back from working too hard?

  He swung it down, slamming it right into the ore.

  I was never smart for uni. Couldn’t understand college. I didn’t want to sit at a desk or stand at a store all day.

  His chiselled and tanned body glistened with his sweat. His singlet clinging to his back.

  Before I knew it, when I got this job, twenty years had passed. I worked day and night. It was hard, but honest work. Enough to provide.

  Over, and over, and over, he brought the pickaxe to slam down into the mineral deposit.

  Some may look down on me. Some may think of me as a failure. Some may even consider me a fool. But all of that couldn’t dent the pride I had in my work, as solid as any titanium deposit.

  Yet he continued, unrelenting and unyielding.

  Even on his final day.

  The last swing emanated with finality, striking deep into the mineral deposit. Jamming into an ore that swirled with the mystical light of the universe, it held a brilliant vermillion eye that stared back at him.

  And with it, his body slumped.

  Down to the ground.

  His world grew hazy. He stared at the ceiling of the cavern. Dark and musty, it held the secrets and very foundation of the world. What gems were hidden beneath each rock? What beautiful quartz refined from over a million years slumbered, waiting to be unearthed?

  Shouts came from across the cavern, as drowned out as they may be.

  “Oi! This is his seventh 12-hour shift of the week! Who the hell let him come to work?! Quick, slam the emergency point and get first aid!”

  The voice of his old foreman echoed throughout the mine, calling everyone to action.

  “You idiot… Why push yourself to this extent, even if that happened?” His old co-worker sighed, opening his eyelids to check for any signs of life.

  And…

  “Big bro! I drew a picture of you finding the painite, the rarest gem in the world! You said with this, even my pain would go away, right?”

  An old memory surfaced in the final moments of his life.

  They say death embraces you with the tapestry of your life. Your brain scours every corner of your memory to find a solution to your dilemma. To ease you as you passed into the river of death.

  For him, only one memory came by at the gates of hell.

  In the end, I never found it. The rarest gem in the world. If there was one regret, it would be…

  With that came the end of one man from Earth.

  But it was just the beginning.

  Kuang Gong had a slouched back, with sunken and hollow cheeks. His scrawny body continued to chisel away at the mineral deposit, even if each swing was devoid of energy.

  His body trembled at each moment, unable to bear with the pain. But Kuang Gong would not relent.

  “Just a bit more… Until I fulfill my quota. Then I can… finally eat. And send more money to my family…”

  Even talking used too much energy.

  His swing festered with hollow exhaustion, cutting right into the mineral deposit. It jammed into an ore that swirled with mystical lights like the Moonlantern Festival of his hometown.

  Yet, he felt the dread that an eye looked back at him. Like a spectator that had seen every part of his worthless life.

  Kuang Gong fell to the ground.

  What a meaningless life. I hated it all. Every last minute of it.

  In a dying body, he still held his thin arm up, palms wide as if to grab the sun.

  All he saw was the cold, harsh, and ugly ceiling of the cavern.

  His body lost all vestiges of life.

  “Don’t tell me this is the third one this month? At this rate, all of us will end up dead before the end of the year…” The defeated sounds of his worker came out when he noticed the collapsed body of Kuang Gong.

  “A trash death for a trash man. Not a surprise,” a coworker mocked him, bringing light to the reason why he ended up here.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Someone grab his corpse and chuck him into the graveyard. Just another number to add.”

  Kuang Gong wanted to cry, yet no tears came out.

  Sorry, everyone. I couldn’t make it as a disciple, I couldn’t even learn to absorb Qi. I…

  I regret it all.

  And Kuang Gong died.

  But this was not the end of his tale.

  No, it was just the beginning.

  Wasn’t that right, Kuang Gong?

  Wake up.

  “Honestly, even in death, he won’t let go of that pickaxe.” One of the workers said, throwing Kuang Gong’s body on top of a mound. Too lazy to even dig a hole in the room of the dead, they opted to bring someone else in to finish the job.

  They had a quota to fill for the Ethereal Life Sect, after all.

  And soon, Kuang Gong’s body was left alone in the mass grave of his fellows. His right hand gripped the pickaxe to the point no one could free it. The end of the road for every miner that worked for the sect. The tomb for those aspirants of the heavens, seeking to conquer the skies.

  Kuang Gong’s black eyes opened wide.

  He gasped for breath uncontrollably, and his left hand grasped for his heart.

  He took every breath as if it were his last. His brain went into overdrive, trying to force his body to live no matter what.

  With that sensation of a true death, his body had tripled his heart rate and pumped blood vigorously around his body.

  It was yelling at him. Don’t die. Not here. Not now.

  Only then did his other senses slowly come back.

  His sense of smell, with the earthy and musty scent of the mine caverns, and a tinge of metal.

  His sense of touch returned, feeling the grain of dirt beneath his hands, slightly wet from the fluids of human corpses.

  His sense of hearing came with the sound of a ghastly wind cutting through the cavern's hallways.

  His sense of taste, with the bitter bile of stale bread and a parched throat.

  And his sense of vision, where the dark world of death had dissipated with the grey world of an exhausted life.

  “Huh.”

  Kuang Gong stood up, but even that motion was a struggle.

  Using the pickaxe in his right hand as a make-shift cane, he used it to stand up.

  Even that action made him tremble.

  He put his left hand to feel for his face, his eyes darting around the room.

  “That’s right. I-”

  Then it came.

  The pain of multiple memories melding into a single man.

  Blood leaked from his nose.

  His eyes turned bloodshot.

  And a pain even worse than the physical exhaustion of his body overcame him. A headache worse than being melted under the sun, like a thousand bees were locked inside his skull, all buzzing around to get out.

  His brain used every ounce of energy in his body to facilitate the transfusion of minds, even if it meant eating into whatever muscle mass he had left.

  Kuang Gong was stunned on the spot.

  There was no time to even yell in pain.

  For even though it lasted an eternity, it had actually taken a single second in reality!

  He took a deep, clear breath, wiping the blood from his nose.

  Then he looked at the ceiling. The cold, hard ceiling of a cavern.

  “So that’s how it is, huh. Am I Kuang Gong, or am I… No matter.”

  Kuang Gong lifted the pickaxe right up, staring at its dull and worn out edges.

  “We both lived and died by the pickaxe. But, while I had a meaningful life, this man did not. He never got to enjoy the joys of life. We are fellow kindreds. We‘ve gone through the same pain, yet the pain he has ran deep into his mind,” he spoke to himself, in the cave of graves.

  “I don’t know if this is the work of a god or a devil. Or even if it’s just happenstance. But Kuang Gong, our wills have merged. And I’ll show you what it means, to be a true miner and to love this craft.” His pale skin was like a ghost, but it still held that pickaxe with a resolute conviction.

  With bloodied gums, he had a deep grin.

  “From now on, my name will be Gon. And in this new world, I will become the greatest miner to ever exist!”

  With the pickaxe resting on his shoulder, Gon observed his body. He flexed his biceps, only to see a pittance of skin instead. “But, for a man whose toiled as a miner for so long, he sure has a scrawny body. First, I need to eat.”

  Gon used his left hand to run it through his long black hair, slicking it backwards. “Doesn’t this get in the way of work? It’s so… oily and grimy. I’ll need to cut it later on.”

  It was strange to walk around without even an ounce of energy. Gon didn’t feel any solidity even in his own body, almost as emaciated as a skeleton. The working conditions of this mine were absolutely horrendous.

  “Where’s the union? We need a representative to give us worker’s rights. Let alone a balance of work and life and free meals provided by the company. Or the so called Ethereal Life Sect. What a contradiction.” Gon reached the entrance of the grave, looking back one last time.

  “We don’t even have the gift of a proper burial. This place is no true work station for a miner. We are the ones who prop up the foundations of the world, and yet they treat us like this?! If I don’t see to it that this is changed, then my name isn’t Gon!”

  Holding the pickaxe with an unyielding will, Gon strode forth. Back to his workplace, a new man, in every meaning possible.

  Though the walk was long, Gon felt like he was climbing up a steep mountain. “This body… It really is in a terrible shape. Exactly how did it end up like this? This company, or sect, doesn’t even provide the basic rights of a human… Something is entirely wrong with the system put up in this place.”

  A sharp pain stabbed in his mind, like someone had drilled a tiny hole to pry into his brain.

  Like an itch that he could never reach.

  But then his vision was hazy, and in the brown and grey world of a mine cavern, was filled with a luminescence of a holographic blue screen.

  Gon rubbed his forehead, yet it didn’t improve the situation.

  Instead, blaring loud words were forced into his eyes. It didn’t matter if he looked around, for it followed that as well.

  System Unlocked!

  You have attained the Supreme Sovereign Immo-

  “Shut up!” Gon yelled, resting on the wall. “Why the hell are you so goddamn loud? My bloody eyes can’t adjust to these fireworks in the middle of a dark cave!”

  Gon rubbed his eyes, waiting for the pulsating lights in his vision to wear off. After massaging the ridge of his nose, he opened his eyes again.

  He continued to walk in the hallway, this time with peace and mind to revel in his own thoughts.

  “There are still many strange things in this world. I need to gain my bearings first and see what’s going on.”

  Gon saw the hallway at the end finally lead to an open cavern, with sounds of workers and the clashing of metal and minerals resounding across the caverns.

  “Then I’ll have to see what to do next.”

  The same blasted lights came blaring inside his mind and eyes again.

  New Mandatory Quest Unlocked!

  Defeat the Outer Disciple Guard of the Mine Caverns and Escape!

  Reward: Drop of Divine Phoenix Bloo-

  “No.”

  Gon scrunched his eyes, scrutinising the words that appeared in his mind.

  “Why would I do that? Going around beating up someone, that’s just asking for a hell of a lot of trouble.” Gon chastised the strange system.

  “Use your head for a bit. Right now, I have shelter and food secured while I figure out what’s going on. I can make some money in these mines, and figure out what difference this place has to my old world. Are the mineral deposits completely different? Are there new elements and gems to be found? But most important of all.”

  Gon flexed his muscles, or rather, what remained of it.

  “I need to get some goddamn protein and bulk up!”

  System: …