Reborn in another world as a Hermaphrodite

"Alex! Where are you?"

As noises echoed into Alex's ear, his head was extremely dizzy. Barely able to comprehend the thing in front of him.

Everything looked extremely blurry until he finally got the energy to sit up and concentrate with his eyes.

"Hm? Where am I?"

Looking around, he was in the middle of some white room, with no one near him at all.

When the sound reappeared again, he quickly recognized it was from Sophia and Mary.

"I'm right here!"

After yelling it out loud, he leaned back against the wall, getting up before he began walking towards where the sound came from earlier.

"Fuck... That wasn't just a dream." Alex murmured as he started checking his armor.

His shoulder pad and his shield were still gone, with snake blood splattered all over his sword and armor.

Twenty minutes later...

As the sound of Sophia and Mary yelling for him continued to appear, he quickly realized something was off.

He wasn't getting any closer, despite walking towards the sound and yelling back at them to come towards him.

It had just stayed constant despite him trying every method, from staying still to walking toward them.

"For fuck sake, is this still a part of another test?"

Feeling a little exhausted, Alex straight up sat down on the floor, seemingly to have given up on the dungeon run.

"Mom! I give up! I don't want to do this anymore."

After waiting for a few minutes and hearing no response, he immediately got a little concerned.

"Shit. Did I trap myself where even Mom can't find me?"

Alex got up again from the floor before heading towards the opposite direction of the sound.

As he walked further and further away, the sound finally became quieter until it completely disappeared.

Just as he was about to start breaking the dungeon to get out, he finally reached somewhere that wasn't just a white room.

It was some sort of alter room, with hundreds of diagonal lines and a large circle around it.

"Is this some sort of spell?" Alex wondered as he reached his hand towards the lines.

Suddenly, the walls of the alter room turned bloody red, with the lines on the floor lighting up.

The entrance where he came from disappeared, with no other way out.

"Oh no."

The entirety of the red lines started to become brighter and brighter, with the wall starting to compress towards the middle.

Alex immediately thought of using his mana to cast a barrier, but he couldn't release any of his mana at all.

His mana was completely suppressed, with the walls starting to move closer and closer towards the middle.

"Mom! I don't want to do this anymore. I'm scared! Someone please save me."

Seeing the walls almost reaching all the way to the first red line, his face panicked even more as it kept on moving.

There were only a few seconds left before the wall crushed him into mush as he tried to stand as close to the middle as possible.

"Mom! I don't want to die here. Shit, shit, shit! There's no way I die here."

Feeling his armor being pressed down, hopelessness began to settle in as there was not a single thing he could do.

All his strength was no match against the wall, as his armor began to crack under the wall's compression.

Alex closed his eyes and accepted his fate.

A single drop of tear fell from his eyes as he couldn't believe this was the way he was going to die.

However, after closing his eyes for almost a minute, he could still feel completely fine and alive.

Opening his eyes back up, the wall was still right before his eyes. But it couldn't press down any further.

A bubble had also somehow appeared on his body, preventing the wall from compressing any further.

After a few seconds, a black mist surrounded him before everything faded to black.

---

When Alex could see again, Katherine was right above him.

Looking to the side, he quickly realized he had been resting on top of her lap as a pillow.

"Mom! I'm scared!"

Alex immediately sat back up before hugging Katherine, his face full of fear as his heart was still racing from earlier.

"It's okay. Mommy is here. There's nothing to be scared of."

As she gently patted him on the back, his mind slowly began to calm down a little.

After the two separated from each other, Alex was finally back to his usual composure.

"Mom... What happened? Where did I go?" Alex curiously asked.

"You were on the right track... But unfortunately, you fell for a trap, so I teleported you back here."

"Thank you, Mom!"

Alex gave Katherine another hug again, as he never felt more safe than being next to her.

"No problem, honey... Mommy will always be there to protect you. Don't worry about safety."

After the warm exchange, the two of them separated again. But they could feel they had gotten much closer than ever.

"Mom, where is Sophia and Mary?" Alex curiously asked.

"They're still at their pathway... They should be coming out soon, in like an hour or so."

He silently nodded as he looked around the throne room, only to realize that another pair of people were missing.

"Where's Miss Meiya and Luqing?"

"They're with your sister right now... You want to see how they are doing?"

Alex quickly nodded, his eyes a little intrigued by what possible challenges those two could be facing.

"Let me take out a crystal ball... Here it is."

As Katherine took a blue crystal ball from her pocket dimension, she quickly began channeling her mana directly toward it.

After a while, the crystal ball began to change rapidly, going from black to white, and so on, until two people appeared.

Inside, he could see Katherine and Sophia walking in a white hallway, just like he had earlier.

"Mom! We give up! This is pointless!"

Mary already started complaining, but looking over to Katherine made him realize she could hear him the whole time.

He felt a little grumpy, realizing Katherine had probably heard his plea for help at the start and only decided to save him at the very last second.

But he quickly moved past it as Sophia and Mary encountered a challenge ahead of them.

It was almost the same room as the one he got into earlier, except the room was blue.

The two didn't enter the room right away, opting to throw a spell inside first.

However, there was no reaction.

With no other way around it, the two finally stepped inside the room, triggering the spell on the floor instantly.

"What is this!"

As the blue room began to fill up with water, Alex could tell the two were trying to cast spells, but nothing was coming out.

"Sophia, hold my hand and transfer your mana over!"

The two quickly held hands together as the water started to rise all the way to their knees.

To Alex's surprise, the spell on the floor shatters, allowing the two to create an air bubble in the water.

Even as the water filled up the entire room, the two were completely fine in the air bubble they had created.

After almost a minute of the room being filled with water, the two could finally advance as all the water disappeared.

"Mom, how did they break that spell?"

"They just overwhelm it with their mana... Usually, it takes at least two people to break it."

The answer made Alex a little grumpy again as he realized he was practically put into an unwinnable trap.

"Is there other way around this room?"

"Nope... I guess if you were mage level three, you would have gotten over it that way, too."

As he watched Sophia and Mary continue their run, he suddenly felt something was a little off about the challenges.

"Mom, who made all these? It doesn't really feel it is formed naturally."

"Took you long enough to notice it... My teacher transformed this dungeon a little bit different from just naturally formed ones."

"We didn't sign up for this," Alex murmured, feeling he had been lied to.

"I never said anything about going to an all-natural dungeon. That kind of stuff isn't that easy to find."

The answer still disappointed him a little, but there wasn't much he could do as he watched Sophia and Mary almost reach the next challenge.

"Mom, why did these challenges appear after I was separated from them? Why couldn't I do it together with them?"

"Because that would be too easy. What's the fun in that? I want you guys to go through the challenges I went through, okay?"

As Katherine gently patted him on the head, he still felt a little bit cheated by being a single person rather than two.

"Fine, Mommy is sorry to isolate you like this... How can Mommy make it up for you?"

Katherine asked after finally noticing Alex's grumpy mood, realizing how unfair it was for him to go through the challenge alone.

"I want a sword! One that I can cast magic with and stab people."

The wish made Katherine sigh for a second, but she eventually nodded in agreement.

"When you're an adult, I'll gift you one that can do both."

"Yay! Woohoo! Mom, you're the best!——Muah!——I love you, Mom!"

"I love you too."

Seeing Alex celebrating in happiness, all of the worries on her face disappeared.