The sky over the Green Leaf Mountains was turning purple with thunder and lightning.
Alex wiped a mixture of sweat and rain from his forehead, while holding the strap of his worn-out canvas bag tighter.
He was nineteen, very lean, short, just 5.3 with messy black hair that stuck to his face.
"Just my luck," Alex muttered, his breathing heavy. "Uncle John said it would rain, but I didn't think the sky would open up like this."
He wasn't a powerful Gene warrior, just an average awakener, without any true profession, an F rank strength, slightly higher than ordinary people, living in Iron Creek City.
In fact, just two years ago, Alex was an ordinary office worker on Earth.
However for some unknown reason, he suddenly woke up in the body of Alex from this world.
Even with the memories of a life on earth, life was not easy for him in a world that was affected by "Mana Recovery & powerful Professionals".
He was still waiting for the last two years for some miraculous system to help him reach the top of the world or awaken some powerful genes, but nothing happened so far.
As for his life in this world.
From the memories he inherited, uncle John had taken him when he was still ten years old, raising him alongside his own two kids.
Standard Protagonist template, his own parents missing.
Alex easily adjusted to the new world, it's just that he had a brawny, loudmouthed older male cousin named Marcus, and a sharp-tongued, older female cousin named Elena.
They were a noisy, chaotic, and loving family, but money was always tight.
That was why Alex was out here in the dangerous outskirts, miles from the city, searching for 'Spirit Grass.'
A single stalk could sell for 500 or more credits, enough to maintain his own finances for a while.
Boom!
Thunder cracked directly overhead, shaking the ground beneath his muddy boots. The drizzle instantly turned into a torrential downpour.
"I can't make it back to the city outpost," Alex realized. "I need to take shelter for now."
Through the curtain of rain, he saw a jagged silhouette on a nearby ridge. It looked like an old building, its roof sagging and covered in moss.
A shrine. There were many such buildings that appeared in this world decades ago out of nowhere after the Mana Recovery.
Without hesitating, Alex climbed up the slippery slope, his hands clawing into the mud.
He threw himself through the rotting wooden doors of the structure just as a bolt of lightning struck a nearby pine tree, turning the world white for a split second.
He collapsed on the dry, dusty floor, gasping for air.
"Fuck just missed that," he cursed, brushing the dirt off his clothes.
He looked around. It was a dilapidated shrine, clearly abandoned for decades.
The air smelled of dry rot and old incense.
In the center of the room there was a stone statue, but it was too damaged to make out what it represented.
The head was missing, and vines already strangled most of the torso.
Behind the snake statue, there was a faded painting on the wall. It depicted a beautiful woman with the lower body of a large serpent.
"A Naagin?" Alex whispered. "A snake demon?"
Crack-BOOM!
Lightning struck right outside, lighting up the room in a flash of stark white.
However, the cold inside the shrine was unlike the damp chill of rain; it felt like the air itself had been stripped of heat.
Alex shivered suddenly, his teeth starting to chatter as he reached for the hem of his soaked t-shirt to wring it out.
He squeezed the fabric, water dripping onto the dusty floorboards, when a flicker of white caught his peripheral vision.
He froze.
His heart hammered against his ribs, not from the exertion of the climb, but from a sudden, primal spike of adrenaline.
Slowly, he turned his head toward the broken stone deity.
There, huddled behind the moss-covered base of the statue, was a woman.
Alex's breath hitched in his throat, and he subconsciously swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry despite the humidity.
She was stunning in a way that felt dangerous.
Her hair was a cascade of silvery-black silk, plastered against her neck and shoulders by the rain, framing a pale face with wide, fearful blue eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom.
But it was her state of dress… or lack thereof… that locked Alex's gaze in place.
She was wearing what looked like a thin, white ceremonial robe, but the torrential rain had rendered the fabric almost entirely transparent.
It was soaked through, clinging to her body with the tenacity of a second skin, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Alex couldn't help himself; his eyes traveled down.
The wet silk was pasted tight against a pair of heavy, full breasts that rose and fell rapidly with her shivering breaths.
The cold hardened her nipples, which pushed visibly against the cloth, demanding attention.
The fabric dipped in at an impossibly narrow waist before flaring out over wide, soft hips and thick, shapely thighs that were curled up against her chest.
Every curve of her hourglass figure was highlighted by the wet clothes, outlining the deep valley of her cleavage and the soft swell of her stomach.
She looked incredibly soft, plump in all the right places, radiating a raw, intense femininity that made the dark, rotting shrine feel suddenly suffocatingly hot.
She looked up at him with a pitiful, trembling expression, wrapping her arms around her knees as if trying to hide her exposed body, which only served to squeeze her chest together, pushing her cleavage up further.
"I..." Alex started, his voice cracking. He blinked, trying to clear his head.
'I checked this room. I scanned every corner when I walked in.' The logic part of his brain was screaming an alarm. 'She wasn't there five seconds ago.'
The shrine was barely twenty feet wide. There was no back door, no hidden cave.
Yet, the biological part of his brain, the part of him that was a nineteen-year-old virgin who hadn't seen a woman this beautiful, let alone this exposed, in two lifetimes, was drowning out the logic.
The scent of rain and rot was suddenly overpowered by a faint, sweet smell coming from her, something like blooming night flowers.
"Who are you?" Alex managed to whisper, stepping back slightly, though his eyes remained glued to the way the water dripped from her silver-black hair down onto her collarbone.
The woman didn't speak. She just shivered, her blue eyes locked onto his, pleading for warmth.
The air in the abandoned shrine felt thick, charged with tension that made the hair on Alex's arms stand up.
The mysterious woman didn't say a word. She didn't have to.
She slowly uncurled her legs, the wet, sheer fabric stretching to its breaking point across her thighs.
As he stepped closer, she didn't recoil; instead, she leaned back against the weathered stone of the altar, her legs parting slightly in a silent, daring invitation.
Alex felt his mouth go dry as he watched the white silk cling desperately to her skin.
It was so soaked it was practically painted on, outlining the dark patch of hair between her legs.
"Holy shit," Alex breathed out, his eyes glued to her crotch.
She bit her lip, looking up at him through her lashes, and made a shaky attempt to stand.
She pushed herself up, bracing a hand against the cold stone of the headless statue.
As she rose, gravity did its work.
Her heavy tits bounced and settled, the weight of them dragging the wet neckline lower.
The fabric was so thin Alex could see the dark, stiff peaks of her nipples pressing against it, begging to be touched.
Her legs seemed to give out. With a soft, muffled gasp, she stumbled.
"Hey, watch out—" Alex stepped forward instinctively.
She didn't hit the floor hard.
Instead, she slumped back against the base of the statue, her legs sprawling open in front of him.
The slip caused the strap of her robe to slide off her left shoulder, exposing the top swell of her large, pale breast.
She didn't fix it.
Instead, she looked up at him, her chest heaving, making those tits jiggle with every ragged breath.
She slowly extended a trembling, pale hand toward him, her fingers curling in a 'come here' gesture.
Alex's brain was screaming at him that this was wrong, that people don't just appear in sealed rooms, but his body wasn't listening.
His little brother was already rock hard, throbbing painfully against the zipper of his rough canvas pants.
He took a step closer, his boots crunching on the dusty floor.
"You... you hurt?" he asked, his voice rough.
She shook her head slightly, her blue eyes never leaving his face.
She shifted her hips, grinding her ass against the stone floor, and the movement made the wet fabric ride up her thighs, exposing creamy, smooth skin.
Alex was close enough now to smell her. The scent was intoxicating, he looked down at her, looming over her vulnerable body.
From this angle, he could see right down the front of her loose, soaked robe.
"Fuck," he muttered, unable to look away from the deep cleavage displayed right in front of him. "You're... really wet."
The woman reached out and wrapped her cold, wet fingers around his ankle.
The touch sent a jolt of electricity straight up his leg to his groin.
She squeezed, then slowly, deliberately, began to drag her hand up his calf, her palm pressing firmly against his jeans.
Alex fell to his knees in front of her, driven by a lust he'd never felt before in either of his lives.
He reached out, his trembling hand hovering over her exposed shoulder, wanting to feel if her skin was as soft as it looked.
"Who are you?" he whispered again, though he barely cared about the answer anymore.
He just wanted to rip that wet, see-through rag off her body and bury himself in her, but the moment Alex's fingers brushed the damp skin of her shoulder, the dynamic shifted violently.