《Unlimited: Shattered World》 Prologue: Monster Unleashed Prologue: Monster Unleashed Max was alone. He was usually alone, generally by choice, and tonight was no different. It was New Year¡¯s Eve and he was waiting patiently for it to arrive in his single apartment in LA. There were still quite a few hours until it was the New Year in his time zone but there was only a few minutes left until the year for the GMT changed. He wasn¡¯t going anything at the moment, Max was a fairly empty person, emotionally, and not much held his interest. The only thing he consistently liked was reading as it enabled him to forget about the world and live in another for a short period of time. He wasn¡¯t doing that now as he had just finished his last book and had no new book to replace it and he was still thinking about what book to reread next. Max had just turned twenty one last summer and was in his final year of college. He didn¡¯t particularly like college nor did he particularly dislike it, it was merely a means to an end to him. Lofty goals and ambitions were foreign concepts to him but he was able to come up with plans and his long term plan was to work for the CIA. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d feel any different after working there but he figured the job would at least be consistently interesting and there were only two things that Max wanted to avoid at all cost. The first was boredom as being bored or inactive left his mind free to wander and that more often than not led him into thinking about his situation, it was always an unpleasant experience for him and every time it happened he felt himself slowly fade away. Max had felt for a decade now that he lacked a true purpose in life and that was the reason for his nearly constant empty state so he naturally sought a purpose for himself. The other thing he wanted to avoid at all costs was losing control of his self. He didn¡¯t know if the sensation was a fabrication of his mind or an actual separate piece of himself. What he did know was that if he ever lost control he¡¯d become a monster, he¡¯d lose his humanity and the last smoldering embers of his once positive and innocent personality. He may be mostly empty but he did still feel emotions and he did have people he cared about, although that number is fairly low. He cared about his parents, in spite of their strained relationship, he cared about his sister and he cared about his ex-girlfriends. His first girlfriend had broken up with him at the end of his senior year in high school. It wasn¡¯t a bad break up, meaning from a fight or other such things, but due to the nature of their relationship being too painful for his former girlfriend. They had been long distance dating, something that¡¯s extremely hard to due for adults let alone high school students, and the stress of maintaining a healthy relationship from opposite sides of the US combined with the inability to regularly see each other was too much for her to take. Her parent¡¯s had been very unaccommodating when it came to allowing her to visit me and their refusal to let her fly down, or me fly up, for Senior prom was the straw that broke the camel¡¯s back. Unfortunately for Max this came at a period of loss for him, with the death of his uncle and lifelong pets, and he was already in a deep state of depression. When she told him that they were no longer dating he was broken. She was the first person he was actually certain he loved and her loss destroyed the gradual progress his mental state had made during the relationship. His body shut down and he was bed ridden for two weeks only taking barely nutrients for his body to survive during this time. He had tried to kill himself to save himself from experiencing the empty void state he had been living through before that point. There were only two things that saved him from his attempt, the hesitation caused when he briefly thought what the news would do to the girl he still loved and the brief loss of control over his body when his other side took over. So he lived in and eventually become functional once more although he felt emptier than ever from that point on. Eventually he graduated high school and left for college where he met his next girlfriend. She was able to face the truth of how he really was and felt without batting an eye and still loved him despite it. Thus he started dating the second person he truly came to love; he was still uncertain whether he truly loved his family or if it was a conditioned state of thought. Unfortunately this wasn¡¯t meant to be either as just last year she was in a bad accident that left her in a coma, which she was still in. He never looked for a new partner as he still had the hope she would wake up, but there had still yet to be any sign of that happening. So he continued the year alone at school living alone, just trying to pass the time as fast as possible in the hopes of her waking up the next day. Now it was Winter Break and he was currently staying in his apartment for the break, deciding against going back to stay with his family for the month long vacation. He just passed his days reading or on the internet waiting for whatever news the next day would bring. As time had passed and the hits took their toll his mind had slowly degraded. He wasn¡¯t going insane, instead he was just kept losing pieces of what truly made people human, emotions. Each piece that fell away, each crack that appeared in his mind let his darkness slowly gain more purchase in his mind. He didn¡¯t want to lose himself to his dark side as he still held hope that one day he could regain what he lost and if he gave in and become the sadistic monster he knew he could become he wouldn¡¯t be able to live with that. Unfortunately it was a battle he knew he was losing so he came up with the best solution he could think of. If left unanswered his darker impulses would eventually lead him to become one of history¡¯s worst murders and monsters so he decided to take a path that would let him help him sate those urges without becoming a criminal. The answer was to find work were he would be allowed to kill legally. At first he was going to join the military but soon realized he couldn¡¯t tolerate listening to orders from someone he didn¡¯t care about. Then it was going to join the FBI or become a cop but he hated the current justice system and knew he would eventually break the law after seeing some scum he had caught walk free. Finally he came to an answer, join the CIA. If he joined the CIA he would likely have minimal orders, telling what to do but not how to do it, would not be sent against targets that would not just walk free and more importantly he would be sanctioned to kill thus satiating his darker urges. Of course he based this plan on the fact he would be a field agent or spy but hey it was the best he could come up with. So now he was preparing to enter his last semester of college before he had to join the ¡°real¡± world. He wasn¡¯t looking forward to it. As his thoughts finished Max sighed and looked at his clock. His mind generally liked to give him an overview of his life every time he stopped keeping it active before switching to more unpleasant thought cycles. His alarm clock showed him the local time and GMT time both, he liked preferred it that way for some reason, and saw there was only a minute left until it was New Year¡¯s (by GMT). Max slowly got up from his bed, he rarely got up from it unless he was at school, working out or taking care of necessities, and walked over towards the single window in the room. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He noticed his appearance reflected back at him in the window pane. Dull, lifeless hazel eyes with dark rings under them, long wavy raven black hair spilling down his back, and a plain set of black pajama pants and t-shirt covering his six foot two frame. He dully noted that he had lost a slight bit of muscle tone over the past month and a half as he had been too apathetic to work out as vigorously as he used to lately. It wasn¡¯t a big difference; he still had a muscular streamlined look but it was just slightly worse than his peak (easily maintainable) appearance. Sighing out loud to himself Max whispered into the empty room. ¡°I wish the world was different, that I didn¡¯t have to live like this. Another year but still I remain the same; I want life to be exciting, to be challenging, interesting and never boring, and to just simply not be this dull world I was born in.¡± Reflected in the background he saw the time on his clock strike twelve signaling the start of the New Year. Max wasn¡¯t sure if he was imagining it or not but he thought he heard the smallest of whispers tell him ¡°wish granted, careful what you wish for¡±. Just as he was about to brush the whisper off as his imagination something happened, the world just stopped. He could still think and move his eyes but nothing else, and everything and everyone outside was the same. Then a strange blue window popped up in front of him. -Max POV-
The world has now changed and you must now change with it. First update will commence once all participants are functional. Standby as participants are healed and woken up
What the hell? I don¡¯t know what¡¯s happening but I feel like this will not end well, for anyone. I had barely enough time for those thoughts before the standby message was replaced.
All participants are now functional. Loading update¡­¡­.Update complete, next update will be in two weeks.
After a few moments the screen disappeared leaving me very confused until all hell broke loose. Whatever was keeping the world frozen suddenly stopped and before I could process this I suddenly had an inexplicable extreme feeling of danger coming directly towards my back. I didn¡¯t have time to react so my other side did it for me. My other side flooded my mind and my body instantly moved. My body launched to the side, propelled by gravity and the force my arms generated from pushing off the window, which left a sizable crack by the way. I didn¡¯t even have time to take in the form of whatever was behind me before I heard a crash and saw the blurry outline of something jumping through my window to the outside. Whatever instinct of feeling I had was hadn¡¯t let up even as the first danger went through my window so I once more reacted on instinct and rolled to the side, slamming myself into my bed in the process. When I looked back at the spot I had been previously occupied I finally was able to see what my senses were screaming at me about. Hunched over with a knife implanted firmly in the wood floor of the spot my head had been occupying was a short (about two and a half feet) green thing, which reminded me of a goblin or some variant of it. It looked vaguely confused by the lack of a body attached to its knife and sense I was no longer fully in control of myself and I still had an extreme feeling of danger I didn¡¯t miss the importunity. Not bothering to try and be graceful or cool about it I simply lunged at the creature smothering it with my body. It tried to struggle but I weighed just under 200 pounds so it was in vain, it didn¡¯t help that the position of the arm it had on the knife caused it to break when I feel on it. I just continued to lie on top of it as its struggles slowly subsided, it got a few hits on my but nothing but light scratches and bruises were the result as it was lying face down underneath me. When it finally stopped struggling I give it a few moments before getting up and without even hesitating stomped my foot down on the back of its neck, insuring that it was indeed dead. My mind worked in overdrive as my darker half receded back into the depths of my mind. I didn¡¯t feel like I had much time so I spent little time pondering over the why or how and instead focused entirely on what to do. I figured the current situation had to do with the ¡°update¡± and briefly recalling the half heard whisper I just started moving. I quickly changed clothes, switching into ¡°combat gear¡±, which consisted of military cargo pants, steel toed boots and a thrown on leather jacket. I kept my senses open incase another incident happens as I quickly packed a hiking backpack full of anything I deemed useful. I was still flying mostly on vague speculation and instinct at this point so I was packing in accordance to the thought that I wasn¡¯t dreaming and things were likely to get worse. I put in all the long term food and bottles of water I had into my pack, along with a sleeping bag, all medical supplies I owned and other random useful items like duct tape. I didn¡¯t bother putting in more than one change of clothes as I didn¡¯t view it as a priority and didn¡¯t want to way myself down with non-essentials, no sentimental items either. I didn¡¯t own any guns and the knives in my kitchen were dull so after I finished packing I grabbed the knife of the dead goblin creature, strapped on my pack and exited my apartment. Fortunately for me there were no more goblins in the hallway, unfortunately for others (judging by the screams anyways) the same couldn¡¯t be said about the other rooms. I didn¡¯t even consider stopping to help, thanks to a combination of survival instinct and apathy, and simply rushed as fast as I could to the parking lot hoping that my car was still in one piece. Good news, it was. Bad news it wouldn¡¯t start and from the lack of other moving vehicles and the abundance of stopped cars in the street I figured that to be the case for all vehicles. Looks like I¡¯m going on foot, thank god I live in the suburbs and not downtown. That was my last thought before turning away from the bonfire that the heart of LA was quickly becoming and making my way to the local mall. It was risky but there was a shop in there that sold functional knives and hunting equipment and I need something besides the shitty knife I took off the goblin I had killed. Gritting my teeth I started lighting jogging through the backstreets towards the mall, which was only a mile away. I prayed I made it there in one piece. Chapter 1 Chapter 1: Descent into Madness The trip to the mall was surprisingly without incident. I didn¡¯t know if it was fate or just happenstance but it seemed that few monsters spawned on the streets and alleyways I was taking and the few that did were busy trying to break into the nearest buildings. Whatever was the case I ended up making it to the mall in good time and unscathed but the problem was what to do now that I had arrived. The mall was had three floors with the first being the general clothing shops, the second holding the more specialized stores and the third being electronics and the food court. The hunting store I was going to was on the second floor which had no direct entrance which made getting in and out a trickier proposition than I¡¯d have preferred. I could either enter through one of the entrances on the first floor or the sky bridge from the parking lot to the third floor. Both had their advantages and disadvantages. The first floor had a large number of entrances/exits so there were multiple options for quick escapes if those became necessary. The problem was all the entrances had zero cover and the genius who designed the mall had made the doors reflective rather than transparent so I wouldn¡¯t know what was on the other side until I opened the door. On the other hand the third floor only had one entrance but the skywalk had no door on either side enabling me to see straight into the mall before I entered it. The parking lot also had ample cover for me to use if I needed to hide. Either way was less than optimal however I decided to enter from the third floor as the even if it would be the last desperate option I could use the emergency exits to escape. Still this absolutely a last resort as the alarm would attract the attention of anything nearby. Settled on my course of action I head towards the parking lot. Fortunately the street was empty but the occasional screams from the nearby shops and restaurants were grating on my nerves. The parking lot surprisingly held a large number of cars, though once I thought about it I figured people most have been using the spots when they went to the nearby restaurants for a New Year¡¯s dinner. Still it worked to my advantage as, for whatever reason, the few goblins inside stuck to the middle of the road and left the spaces in between the cars unchecked. I made it to the stairs unseen and was thankful for the lack of goblins wandering them as it enabled me to make it to the third floor unmolested. The walkway was empty of anything, human or otherwise, and I had a clear view into the mall which, due to it being New Year¡¯s, had its lights turned off leaving only the sunlight from the large skylight in the middle to light up the surroundings. I didn¡¯t see anything or anyone moving so I figured it safe enough to make my way cautiously across. Over in the parking lot I hadn¡¯t been able to notice but as soon as I got into the mall proper I was finally able to make out a faint sound, like that of lots of flesh smacking into each other. I couldn¡¯t see the source of the sound so I cautiously made my way down the hallway. The mall had four ¡°arms¡± that connected into a circle in the middle which was a hole that went straight down to the first floor. There wasn¡¯t a solid wall separating the middle ring from the hole so it was possible to look over it and see the bottom floor of the mall. I wish I hadn¡¯t decided to look over the side once I got there as it left my sanity hanging by a bare thread. The bottom floor was full of goblins, I assume they had broken through a door somewhere to get inside, but that wasn¡¯t the problem what they were doing was. The monsters were apparently using the mall as a large base or town or whatever the monsters called such things and had thus brought everything they had with them. This included their weapons, random bits of trash, food and their captives. Some remote corner in the far recesses of my mind vaguely noted the lack of any female goblins or male captives as I saw the horror unfold before my eyes. I may be an empty person but I did still have emotions they were just harder to get reactions from, but if there was one thing guaranteed to get a strong reaction of me was seeing children been brutalized. That was what I saw below me, a couple hundred women of any and all ages being raped repeatedly by an even large number of goblins. That wasn¡¯t even the worst part as once the goblins got bored they seemed to kill their victims and consume their body, while moving on to their next victim, as I got the distinct pleasure of witnessing as soon as I peeked over the edge. My first reaction was to blindly jump over the edge, using the bodies below to break my fall, and go on a killing spree until I died myself. I was just about to do just that and had half my body on the wall poised to vault myself over it when the thought hit me. What about my family? That thought froze me on the spot. They were in danger too and would likely share a similar fate if caught, I might not be sure if my feelings for them were genuine or not but they were there and I needed something to grasp on to keep my mind stable. However I couldn¡¯t just ignore what was happening, what was left of the innocent boy my parents had raised wouldn¡¯t, couldn¡¯t allow it. My mind was breaking down from the conflicting impulses. I couldn¡¯t do both and choosing either option would break what was left of me so I did the only thing I could do I let my dark side completely take over. It¡¯s a bit clich¨¦ to call it that but I didn¡¯t have a better name for it and it fit it well enough. While my usual self would kill without hesitation to help someone else my other side would do it just for the sadistic pleasure it would get from the act. I don¡¯t remember exactly when I became aware of this situation all I knew was that it¡¯s been a constant companion for a long time. Whenever my will wavered or my darker emotions spiked urges/whispers that spawned from it would appear, tempting me to kill. I hadn¡¯t ever listened as I knew I wouldn¡¯t live long if I ever did agree, the world just didn¡¯t work that way. Now however, the world was different and there would be no consequences in becoming a sadistic killer. In fact that was what probably would enable me to survive now as my current self couldn¡¯t remain sane in the face of such hard choices. My other side however, could gaze down at the scene before me with dispassionate eyes and easily leave them to their fates without ever looking back. It wouldn¡¯t take pleasure from their fate; he was a killer not a rapist. He liked inflicting physical harm not destroying a helpless victim¡¯s heart and mind. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. It was a¡­curious sensation, like waking up from a dream. One moment my mind was breaking and my heart tearing itself apart, the next just a cold emptiness was felt throughout my body. There was knowledge of my other side but it felt fake, like scenes from a movie I had watched implanted into my mind instead of real memories. I no longer held emotional reactions; all I had was a purpose. I¡¯m uncertain if it was left over from my other side or if it was a true part of me. All I knew was that I would do anything to survive and insure the survival of the few people I still ¡°cared¡± for. Thinking of the few people in my life that mattered to me brought a strange feeling to my chest, a faint warmness. It made me uncomfortable so I stopped those thoughts and focused on accomplishing my original goal for entering this place, getting some weapons. The second floor was much like the third in that the hallways were devoid of life. Coming up to the hunting store I slowed down as I noticed that there was shattered glass on the ground in front of it. Seeing this I quickly took out the knife I had looted from the goblin corpse while also quietly placing my backpack on the ground. I silently rolled my shoulders a few times to shake out the tension I had accumulated from lugging the heavy pack around. Once ready I slunk towards the window of the shop, which had the glass paneling smashed out, and peaked into the room. I could make out the figure of two goblins busy looting knives from the, currently shattered, display cases. They had their backs turned towards me so I was in the ideal position to sneak up and kill them. Making it over the glass was a pain but I managed to do it without drawing their attention to me and I quickly snuck up on the pair. The one holding their spoils was closer to me than the one gathering more of the knives. He didn¡¯t even notice me until I drew my looted knife across his throat; he made a startled gurgle before collapsing onto the ground. Unfortunately the pleasurable feeling I received from the kill made me momentarily freeze from the unexpected high like state I entered. This cost me as the sound of the knives clattering to the floor drew the attention of the remaining goblin that upon seeing me immediately stabbed towards me with the knife he was currently holding. Luckily for me the height difference and the rushed attack resulted in my merely getting a gash across my side which snapped me out of my trance. Reacting purely on instinct I plunged the knife in my hand into the offending creature¡¯s eye and enter its brain, killing it instantly. Surprisingly the pain didn¡¯t really bother me; in fact I received a little thrill from it. Putting my hand to the wound and bringing it back up left it covered in a light coating of blood. Nonlife threatening but would be annoying to leave unattended. I went back into the hall to get my medical supplies to cover the wound when I noticed my hand still covered in blood. I had a brief impulse to lick my hand clean which I decided to follow. The taste was strange but good at the same time but left my throat sticky so I decided to just wipe the rest off on my pants. It took me all of two minutes to find the gauze and bandages and apply them to my wound. I sprayed it with disinfectant first as I wasn¡¯t going to take the chance of getting ill from some strange goblin disease that could kill me. Once finished I quickly grabbed what I wanted from the shop. Unfortunately it didn¡¯t sell any guns, probably since it was located in a mall, but I was able to get two good combat knives, a largish machete and a compound bow. It was a bit awkward having a machete slapping against my thigh and position the quiver so that I could still reach the arrows while wearing my backpack was a pain but I eventually managed. Task complete I went back where I came from and left the mall. The gash on my side throbbed a bit if I ran so I kept my pace slow and restricted myself to fast walking. Now properly armed, or as armed as I could readily be, I decided heading in the directions of my parent¡¯s home. They lived on the opposite side of LA me so it was quite a long ways away, almost fifty miles, but I was compelled to go. I didn¡¯t consider getting more supplies as a priority as I had a few days¡¯ worth in my pack and anymore would slow me down. Guns also weren¡¯t a priority as I had yet to see any goblins with a ranged weapon let alone a firearm, plus they were usually hard to find and I was a better shot with a bow than a gun (they also made more noise). So unless an easy opportunity presents itself I was going to go straight to my parent¡¯s home. There was an odd feeling, like acid boiling in my stomach, when I thought about their likely fate. The feeling was even worse when I thought about my younger sister who still lived with them as she was still in high school. I push the thoughts aside as the feeling was uncomfortable but still increased my pace slightly. I was in good shape but the trip was hard, extremely so, and by the time I made it I was physically and mentally drained. It took ten hours to make it to their general neighborhood, I was grateful for my good memory as walking so far is a lot different from driving the same distance. During this time I got into no less than ten different fights with goblins, two of which I ended up having to run and hide from. By the time I made it too their house the fifty pounds I was carrying felt like the weight of the world on my back. I would have given myself a quick break to recuperate by the bad feeling I had when I thought about my family was still present even when I tried to not think about them. It had even grown stronger as time passed during my trip. So as soon as I saw their house I picked up my pace, much to my bodies protest, and barged through the door idly noting the fact that it was ajar. The front door to my parent¡¯s house opens up into our living room; it had been our tradition to watch our favorite movies in there while we waited for the New Year. It seems like even without my presence my family had continued the tradition. Seeing the mangled bodies of my family being played with by a group of four goblins caused something in me to snap. The last coherent thought I had before my rage consumed me and the goblins literally exploded was that it turned out I really did love my family. Chapter 2: Waking up Chapter 2: Waking up I was in pain. That was the first sensation I had when I woke up. Although the term woke up might not be entirely accurate as I didn''t know if it was possible to sleep standing up or not. Regardless that was what the closest comparison I could make for the way I felt. It was odd, I knew I was in pain but it was almost a detached feeling with no direct source. Sure my body felt sore and my head was pounding but I can ignore physical pain fairly easily so that wasn''t the problem. The problem was that it felt that there was a jagged hole in my very being and I had no idea how it got there. It made me uncomfortable. I decided to ignore it betting on the chance that the sensation would go away if I ignored it long enough, or I''d get used to it so it wouldn''t matter anymore. Bringing myself out of my thoughts I took stalk of the situation. The room I was in was covered in blood, from the floor to the walls to the ceiling to the shattered debris of the former furniture. The wood floor underneath me also supported a large number of cracks in circle around where I stood. Confusion. That was the overriding feeling I had currently. I remember coming into the house but it had not looked like this when I did, and when I tried to recall what might have happened my mind turned up empty. Taking my gaze off the floor I give myself a quick visual inspection. Nothing was out of place; I looked exactly the same as when I had first entered the home. This surprised me as I remember there not being nearly this much blood in the room when I first arrived and it didn''t make sense that whatever caused the room to be painted in blood spared me. I was still musing over that thought when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Reacting on instinct I drew an arrow from my quiver and readied my bow, not the best choice in a confined environment but better than wasting time to drop it and ready something else. Looking around the room I didn''t see anything, which put me on edge. I wasn''t sure why I was in this home anymore but I figured I had a reason so I made the decision to scout out the rest of the building and make sure there were no more surprises. The search was relatively short as the house only had one floor but I kept seeing something move around the edge of my vision and it was wearing down my nerves. After making a full sweep of the house I returned to the living room where I had first entered the house. As soon as I exited the hallway I finally saw what had been ghosting around the edge of my vision. Luckily for her I strangely had no impulse to kill her for some odd reason. She gave me a strange feeling; like I had met her before and the curiosity that feeling brought the only reason why I didn''t immediately threaten her. She was a girl, roughly four or five year younger than me so likely still in high-school, with the same black hair as me and coming to within a few inches of my full height, which was surprising enough by itself for a girl. The most bizarre thing though was that she was standing in the middle of the lumps of flesh that I presumed the wall decorations came from. Despite obviously having to walk through the blood soaked room her clothes didn''t have a single blood stain on them. In addition she was holding up on of the crude knives I''ve seen the goblins carry with them. I couldn''t see her face, as her back was turned towards me, but she gave the impression that she was staring at it intently. I ease up on my bow and put it over my shoulder as I had the feeling she wouldn''t pose a threat to me. Walking out of the hallway I had been observing her from I call out to her. "Excuse me, what are you doing in here? And why are you so fixated on that knife?" I assume she heard me as she started to slowly turn around. What I saw was odd; if I had been normal it might have disturbing or even horrifying. Her eyes were dead and the front of her clothes appeared to have been ripped off. Judging from the amount of wounds in addition to the blood covering her it appeared as if she had been raped and tortured to death. Her face was what really gave me pause though. It looked familiar and the painful feeling that still hadn''t left me grew in intensity when I saw it. It only got worse when I saw for some reason she started crying. Before I could question her she gives a rough whisper, like someone choking back unimaginable pain or suffering. "Why?" That was all she said before she disappeared leaving the knife to clatter onto the bloody floor. I was frozen by the odd scene that had happened before me. I had never believed in ghosts before, as far as I could remember anyways, but that seemed like a decent explanation. Besides if goblins were now real ghosts could be to right? Of course there was another option and that was that I had hallucinated the whole thing. I didn''t through the idea out since I had no idea how to disprove either explanation but I thought ghost was more likely as while the girl seemed familiar I didn''t have any memory of her. I decided to think about it later but my curiosity was still peeked so I decided to see what was so interesting about that particular knife. Walking through the muck was annoying as my boots kept sticking to the floor but I reached the knife without incident. A quick visual inspection revealed it to be an almost identical copy to the one I looted from my first goblin kill. Deciding to get a closer look I picked it up, bad decision. The first thing I did was throw up, not from any of the images or information that popped into my head but simply from the shear amount of it. I don''t know why but as soon as I touched it I got an entire overview of the knives existence, from its creation to its last and final use. At some point I had fallen to my knees, which was annoying as I landed in a pile flesh of what was once the previous owner of this knife. At least I had a better idea of who that girl was though. I "saw" everything that this knife did, including the mutilation of aforementioned ghost or hallucination. The images made part of me uncomfortable for some reason while another was writing down notes for future reference on technique. It was an odd mix of sensations but the feeling quickly passed, although the headache from the flood of information stayed. The first thought that came to my mind was to be very careful about doing that again. The second was that I had no idea if it would happen again or not. If it would I would need to figure out sooner rather than later if it''s an always active thing or if I can figure out a way to turn it off. Deciding to do a quick test I got up and grabbed one of the knives in my boots. I figured the knife would have much information to give as it had been in a display case until recently so it was likely fairly new. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Now that I was expecting it I felt a strange sensation, like something form the weapon was reaching out to cling onto me. It was a very faint sensation but once I felt it a flood of information once more enter my mind. This time, whether it was because I was prepared, it had a small amount of information or simply because I had already thrown up I managed to avoid a similar fate as my first time. The information was about what I expected but the repeat performance made me curious as to why such a thing hadn''t happened when I was holding my bow or searching the house. Curious I grab my bow with my hand and was once more flooded with its history. I had not explanation of why I was suddenly having this happen now though I guessed it had something to do with my ghost friend. This presented a problem though as I couldn''t freeze up every time I touched something as it could result in my demise. I just made a random guess and decided to look for a pair of gloves in the hope that direct skin contact with my hands was required, as I hadn''t received any information on the clothes I was wearing yet. I returned to the room I had checked first, what appeared to be a males bedroom though it didn''t appear to have been lived in for a while. I hoped whoever had lived there had glove my size, considering that the girl was close to my size I assumed the boy, who I assumed would be her brother, would be the same. The process of searching the room was long and unpleasant to say the least. Any time I touched something I was assaulted with information that caused my ever growing headache to throb even more. My efforts paid off however and I was able to find a pair of leather gloves that fit my rather well. Of course I got the information about its history but like everything else in this room I wasn''t able to see the face of the person who used them, which was odd but I didn''t worry about it. After there were on I tried picking up something else and to my relief I wasn''t instantly assaulted by the clothing''s life story. I still felt the sensation of something trying to grab onto my hand but it wasn''t able to reach it. I did find however if I decided to focus on reach out to it I could still see it''s past but it took a lot more concentration than I''d be able to give in a normal situation so I was pleased. I still wasn''t sure why I had come to this house, as far as I had determined there had been nothing I had deemed of value during my previous search. I didn''t feel like this place was very safe either, as it wasn''t very defensible and I had no idea when or if more creatures would search the house or possibly even appear inside of it again. As I was pondering over whether or not to leave the city or just find somewhere to hunker down for a while I heard a faint whisper in my mind. ...Stay.. That was all that I heard and it wasn''t repeated again. I pondered over the wisdom of listening to voices in my head but I had a bad feeling I wouldn''t like what would happen if I just ignored it. I decided to split the difference and find a safe place to hunker down that was still in the city but not easily accessible. Luckily I knew of a place I could go near here. There was a nearby school whose roof I could get onto fairly easy. It was a middle school and there was only one normal entrance in the form of a ladder and a hatch that was always locked to get up to. I had a vague memory of climbing up the building during the night to just watch the stars but the memory was gone as soon as it appeared. It would be a bit trickier to get up there than before as I wasn''t carrying fifty pounds of gear plus weapons the time I remembered from my memory but it was my best bet as I was exhausted and needed to refuel and rest up before doing anything else. The middle school was only a few blocks away from the house but it took a while to get there as I had to kill a few groups of goblins and hide from even more along the way. I don''t know if they were just getting done with all their victims and were looking for more or if more had just simply showed up. Either way it took me another hour before I reached the wall surrounding the school. It was a pretty recent construction but with the limited space available in the general LA area the walls were built closely to the main school building. This worked to my advantage as there was an easy ledge to jump to on the second floor from the top of the wall. The jump was a bit harder with the extra weight I was carrying and I almost lost my balance on the landing but I made it. The climb up was just as difficult and was torture on my fingers which had to bear all my weight as I used them to slowly make my way up. By the time I managed to pull myself onto the top of the roof my fingers were scraped and bleeding, I had even managed to take out a nail on my left hand. Still I had made it up and from my brief look over there were no enemies. I hadn''t seen any of the bastards on any roofs during any of my trips so I figured they either couldn''t climb, didn''t appear on them or both. I quickly dumped my gear on top of the hatch, using the extra weight as insurance for keeping it closed as well as a warning system, and took out some supplies. I ate a quick meal of protein bars and a bottle of water before setting up my sleeping bag and going to sleep. As I was slowly losing consciousness I saw a figure above me but for some reason I wasn''t worried and continued to fall asleep. As my eyes began to close I caught briefly saw what the figure was. The woman looked similar to the girl from before only shorter and much older. Also like the girl she gave me a familiar feeling and when my eyes finally closed she whispered the same question. Why? AN: Yo this is Ren, likely not going to do too many AN''s but just wanted to ask you guys what you thought of the story so far and if you had any suggestions for me. I''ll explain much more about the world and the changes that occurred in the next two chapters. Thanks for reading, Ren Waya Chapter 3: Hunting Chapter 3: Hunting I was jolted awake sometime next morning, not by any enemy presence or by any of particularly loud scream that have been frequent throughout the night. What woke me up was the intense urge, rather need, to do something. I didn''t have any dreams last night; I was simply asleep one moment and jerked awake the next, so I didn''t have any trouble getting my mind to function, even if it wasn''t in control at the moment. My body grabbed my weapons but left the rest of my supplies, either I planned to come back here or my body just didn''t view them as necessary. Regardless I soon found my body climbing down from the roof of the school. I absentmindedly noticed that my fingers, despite still being caked in blood, were completely healed already, even my nail had regrown. Hell even my side was completely healed when I finally remembered it had been cut. I knew that wasn''t possible, even if I had healed a bit quicker than average this was simply inhuman, but I didn''t have time to think about it anymore. My mind had finally synchronized with my body and my rational thinking was slowly fading, replaced with just instinct, need and a scant handful of emotion. Hunger, excitement, a desperate yearning, an urge to fill the void in my soul. I ran. I couldn''t find what I needed nearby. I had to find what I craved soon. A flash of green, indistinct noises of surprise, the weight of steel in my hands. the feeling of joy at having found what I desired. Rushed movement, the spatter of something warm on my body, something warm replacing the void. The sweet taste of a thick coppery liquid as I clean my weapons. Arousal, the pure ecstasy of satisfying my need, my desire. Finally clarity. I was fairly disorientated when I finally came down from my high. The bodies were the first thing I noticed when I took in my surroundings, or what was left of them at any rate. I had apparently ripped the three goblin creatures to shreds. Looking at the bodies I merely had a feeling of contentment so I dismissed them from my thoughts before taking in the rest of my situation. Apparently I hadn''t been very careful during my...hunt and had gotten a few good slash marks on my chest and arms. They weren''t particularly deep or numerous but they were there. I was a bit annoyed as my leather jacket was now little more than strips of leather held together by a zipper. Still what was done was done and I completed the process of its destruction by tearing the rest of it up into strips I used to put pressure on my wounds. My bow was apparently discarded in favor of more personal methods of killing and it lay abandoned on the ground a few meters behind me. I quickly scanned the area as I walked over to collect it, taking note of the lack of other creatures and my current whereabouts. The blood loss wasn''t life threatening but it was starting to make me light headed so I decided I''d head back to my refuge for the day. Luckily I was only ten minutes away by a quick walk so I get there fairly quickly and without incident. The bleeding had slowed down considerably but the wounds throbbed in time to my movement. By the time I made it up to the rooftop I was ravenous and quickly tore through a size able chunk of my food supplies. I don''t ever remember eating that much before; especially since I wasn''t particularly fond of the flavor of the food I was eating. The canned goods were just stuff I bought as a precaution for their ability to last a long time so I didn''t pay attention to flavor. By the time I finished gorging myself, my wounds had stopped bleeding and I had the pressing need to...relieve myself, which I did over the side of the roof. I''m glad that I consider toilet paper an essential item but I only had two rolls as I had been running low when things changed. Finished with my business I went back to my spot from last night and just lied down. I was tired and wanted to take a nap but my thoughts plagued me. I briefly thought about what happened this morning. I can''t say I didn''t like what had happened as it was more emotion and sensation than I''ve felt in a long time. The only thing I disliked was not being fully in control. The thought was quickly pushed away however as I didn''t consider it all that important, instead my mind turned towards the current situation and what had happened to me. The whole situation was strange to me. The sudden appearance of goblin like creatures everywhere trying to kill you gave that impression. I figured it must be happening everywhere both from the lack of military response and from what the strange screens that had been the prelude to the entire situation had said. It was strange but I didn''t particularly dislike it, if anything I enjoyed it. I had felt more in the last twenty four hours than I had in the last year of my life since...I can''t remember but I have the faint impression that something had happened. I shrugged the thought away as it wasn''t important. What was important was that I was free. Free to lose myself in the joy of simply living in this new world. Despite the desperate desire to reach that home, though I still can''t remember why I did, the fights I had yesterday were enjoyable. I had been able to kill and maim to my heart¡¯s content without repercussions yesterday. It had been the high point of my life since I was in high school when....I can''t remember what had caused the emotions I remembered, but it had been a long time. Still there were a few oddities that I had to puzzle over. The biggest being my new... superpower? Ability? Gift? Whatever its proper title it was strange. I have never been able to do such a thing before and while it was interesting I''m not sure if I liked it. Was it something I always had? Was it part of the update? For that matter why had I completely healed last night? My current wounds were healing at what appeared to be a normal rate so why had yesterday''s been special? These thoughts circled my mind as fatigue slowly set in and I fell asleep. When I woke up it was dark out and I was hungry once more. I was thankful that the power was apparently still running as the street lamps were providing decent enough illumination for me to see what I was doing. I didn''t have the same all-consuming urge that I had when I woke up the first time today. There was still an urge there but I could ignore if I so desired, which I did at the moment. I didn''t eat nearly as much as I had before I fell asleep, having a much more normal sized amount of food. I noted with curiosity that once more my wounds had apparently healed fully. I didn''t quite know what to make of it but decided not to think about it too deeply for the moment. Finished with my meal I divested myself of my current attire, including my makeshift bandages, and changed into my one spare set of clothes. I hadn''t packed another jacket but it mattered little as it wasn''t cold enough to actually need one and my previous one had gave was negligible at best. My new attire consisted of a close fitting, pure black, long sleeved sport shirt, black cargo pants and the same boots as before (shoes are heaving and more than one pair was unnecessary). I only wished I was able to take a bath, sure I could go to a nearby house but showering seemed not so safe at the moment. Still the caked blood on my skin and hair was slightly annoying so I decided to use one of my water bottles to rinse it off as best I could. It wasn''t perfect but it got the majority off. The same urge as before was still there, lingering in the background like a ghost, though it hadn''t increased in intensity since I''ve woken up. I mentally shrugged before deciding to just have some fun next time I ran into some goblins when I went down to look for some more supplies. I wasn''t currently in need of any but since I had seemingly found a safe location it was better to stock up now rather than later when I might not be as well off. I took a good fifteen minutes to do a solid stretching routine. I figured it was a good idea as I had been lucky that my early exploits hadn''t damaged anything and since I had the time better to be safe than sorry. As I finished up and worked my way down the building once more, this time with my backpack (thought bereft of supplies), I made a mental note to start working out before I want to sleep every day. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. I wasn''t sure whether or not I''d heal the same way every time I slept but it was the best hypothesis I could come up with at the moment. If that was indeed the case the damage from a workout should be treated the same way as cuts and bruises were right? Even if I was wrong it was still a good idea to get into better shape. Sure I was in decent shape now but I had been active for almost two months and it showed. Plus if my theory was correct that meant I could push myself much harder and faster than before helping me to reach my physical peak that much sooner. It would definitely give me an added edge when trying to survive. I did regret that I didn''t know how to actually use any weapons besides the bow, which I had spent years practicing through various camps and clubs. I knew a little martial arts but that was mostly self-defense stuff and had little to do with weapons. Anyways I had forgotten most of what I learned anyways as I found the lessons annoying, I was always berated when I did an exercise wrong by going for a more...permanent blow than what was taught. These were my thoughts as I searched through the surrounding houses for supplies. I had checked to see if the water was running, it was, so I just gathered all the plastic water bottles I found in one spot for future use and filled sealed contained from the tap for current consumption. I also scavenged any food I could, I did the same thing with the canned food that I did with the bottles, taking away the much tastier though not as long lived choices. I also remembered to snag some toilet paper and praised lady luck when I found an unopened jumbo pack in one of the houses. I decided to drop of my supplies at my sanctuary before going back out to find me some entertainment. I hadn''t been fortunate enough to run into anyone, human or goblin, during my looting spree so I was a bit bored. It took me thirty minutes of mindless wandering to finally run into some action, though it was worth the wait I felt. There was a group of about six goblins chasing after an extremely abused looking woman. She had no clothes on so I knew the situation she was likely in; though I was surprised she had managed to escape. Unfortunately for her she was about to be recaptured, and from the looks and the goblins'' faces her fate would not be kind. It wasn''t really surprising if you think about it, if anything the fact she was able to run at all was all but a miracle, she simply didn''t have the strength to run for long and the goblins don''t seem to tire very quickly as I''ve come to realize. They hadn''t seen me yet so I had a few options. Option one try and likely fail to rescue someone I didn''t know or care about. Option two was to just leave her to her fate and find easier prey. Or my favorite and the one I was most leaning towards, kill them all. The last option brought a malicious grin to my face. I knew I couldn''t save her even if I was so inclined as the goblins were just too close to kill them all before they reached her. I was even less inclined towards the second option as while the thought of killing, or even torture, was exciting to me, the thought of rape brought up feelings of distaste. That was likely her fate too if any of my, admittedly limited, insights into the creatures was correct. It would not be a kind fate to be raped to death by angry midgets, let alone ones that were extremely sadistic and smelled like sewage. So I decided to go with my favorite option. Hell she might even be grateful that I killed her as it would spare her a worse fate, though I didn''t care if she was or not as only my feelings really mattered. Decision made I readied my bow and took aim. She was just over twenty-five meters away, a tough shot for me in the dark (though luckily I had the streetlamps to help). Bow ready I step out from my cover from behind the house I was hiding behind and drew back my arrow. The girl seemed to somehow notice me in her panicked flight and she almost immediately adopted a pleading expression on her face. I paid it no mind as I loosed the arrow and watched the faint black outline race towards my target. The girl at first give a startled, surprised look as she took in the trajectory. Then she seemed to resign herself to her fate closing her eyes before giving one last sad smile before the arrow hit her in the head killing her instantly. There was a familiar rush of emotions when it happened, though not as strong and tempered a bit by my faint admiration of her composure in front of certain death. The moment quickly passed and I noticed the goblins had stopped and were staring at the body of the now dead woman with an arrow pushed through her skull, her momentum caused her to fall face first despite the impact. I grinned savagely as I was presented some nice easy targets and quickly drew and loosed another arrow killing one of the creatures. That seemed to shake them out of their surprise as they quickly zeroed in and began running at me. They were surprisingly fast creatures for being so small but I still managed to shoot two more down before having to drop my bow in favor of my melee weapons. The fight was quick, brutal and lacked any kind of finesse. I loved it. By the time I was done the built up feelings from my kills almost caused me to drool and had I been normal I would have been embarrassed by the rather obvious bulge from my erection. I had taken only a couple of hits this time, though neither amounted to more than a light bruise and scratch. It took me a few moments to regain my composure before I went and collected my spent arrows. I never bothered to check over corpses of the goblins I''ve killed as they generally don''t have more than a knife and loincloth (if even that) on them. However as I was fishing out one of my arrows from a goblin''s throat I noticed a strange marble like thing next to its body. Curious I picked it up and was immediately assaulted by a strong urge to eat it strangely enough. I managed to restrain myself and put the thing in my pocket before finishing my collections. No other corpse had a similar marble nearby and a quick search and even quicker dissection revealed nothing on them. I didn''t feel like spending any more time so I left, returning quickly to my sanctuary on the roof. Once there I did a relatively light workout for about an hour before grabbing a quick bit of water before sitting down to take out my strange new marble. My erection had calmed down a few minutes after I left the goblin corpses so the climb up and subsequent workout wasn''t too uncomfortable which I was grateful for. My random thought quickly left me as my stomach rumbled and hunger and I once more had the urge to consume the marble. I tried using my new power on the thing but got nothing, both with and without my gloves, which was strange but I wasn''t too bothered by it. I was weighing my options before I decided to just say fuck it and popped the marble in my mouth, I wasn''t afraid of dying and thought it could be a novel experience if anything went wrong. I tried biting the thing but all that did was make my teeth ache so I just swallowed it whole. At first all I felt was a faint cold sensation as it went down my throat. That left quickly however once it reached my stomach and I was quickly assaulted by pain like I''ve never felt before. It''s strange. I thought as my vision started fading to black. On one hand the pain is indescribable, on the other the novel experience of the whole thing is faintly enjoyable. That was the last thought I had before I passed out in a puddle of my own urine and saliva. Chapter 4: Experiments Chapter 4: Experiments I was uncomfortable. That was the first thing that came to my mind as I regained consciousness. Not confusion over what just happened. Not astonishment over my own stupidity for eating a marble I got from a goblin corpse. Not even that I was still experiencing a large amount of pain, just the simple acknowledgement that I wasn''t comfortable. My neck was stiff, my clothes were wet and sticky and I my own smell was giving me a headache. So yeah my first thought was about the trivial inconveniences I was experiencing, sue me. I groaned loudly as I opened my eyes and my headache intensified as the bright light of the sun caused a sharp stab of pain in my head. It took me a couple of minutes before I was acclimated enough to keep my eyes open without causing myself more pain. I promptly groaned again when I noticed another blue screen hovering in front of me; I just knew it wouldn''t be good news. Sighing to myself I decided to just get it over with and read the screen.
System Alert
UI patch forcibly installed. Access to basic UI functions activated
Well that''s interesting, so the world''s like an RPG now then? Is that why there are goblins? How''d I force an update? That marble? Likely but what does that mean for me then? While these questions revolved around my thoughts the screen continued floating in front of me without disappearing. Noticing it hadn''t disappeared after reading it like the previous screens I tried interacting with it in order to try getting rid of it. My initial actions consisting of gestures and voice commands didn''t work so I ended up trying to physically touching it. Poking it didn''t get rid of it but swiping it away seemed to do the trick, only after the first one was gone another took its place.
Achievement UnlockedGame Breaking
For forcibly triggering an update before its patch a unique Title, Attribute, and Skill has been awarded.
I was intrigued by the new screen as it gave me a bit of insight into how this new "game" worked. I once more swiped away the screen in the hopes of having further screens pop up explaining my rewards. I wasn''t disappointed.
New Title
Beta Tester: You are now considered a beta tester by the system and will be given updates in advance of others for testing purposes. You have been granted the ability to re-spawn in order to properly test world features.
I was shocked. Strike that I was stunned speechless. If my guess was correct I''ve essentially become unable to die in this new world. That meant I would get to fully immerse myself in my hunts without fear. I was drooling at the prospect. Something I wasn''t quite sure about my feelings on was being granted updates before others. That can be both a good and bad thing depending on individual updates/patches. I shake myself out of my stupor, apparently I actually had drooled so I had to wipe it off my face. I swipe away the message, eager to see my other messages.
New Attribute
Game Breaker: Able to go above the limitations imposed upon you by the system to a certain degree.
This information was a bit vague and I was left with a lot of speculations on to the exact meaning. Did it mean I could perform actions not deemed as possible by the world? What would that entail? Would I be able to fly now? I hoped I could fly. I controlled the impulse to jump off the roof in an attempt to fly....for now and brought up the next screen.
New Skill
Help Menu: Ability to call upon the help screen for more information about the world. Will teach you the rules of the world so you can know when not to do stupid things.
I smirked in amusement at the screen. Apparently whatever was running the show now had a sense of humor. Still I wasn''t about to complain, after all information is power. I close the window and when no new one took its place I think back over the recent information. When my thoughts reached my new attribute and my previous thoughts about possibly flying a rather insane smile appeared on my face and without even hesitating I start running at full speed towards the edge of the roof. When I reach the edge I jump as hard as I can fully believing I was able to fly. As soon as I reached the height of my jump I started flying! Just kidding I started falling like a rock while laughing madly. I wasn''t afraid of dying, which was guaranteed really since the school was four stories, as for one thing I thought it was very likely I''d really re-spawn again and for another I thought it would be an interesting experience. Which was why, as I got closer and closer to the ground, I was still cackling like a mad man before I was finally silenced by the concrete. There was a lot of pain for a brief moment before things went black. The sensation of death was very interesting as I could physically feel something, I believe it¡¯s my soul, start leaving my body taking my consciousness with it. It was hard to tell time in my "soul form", as I decided to call it, as I had no sensations or feelings at all, all I had was a vague awareness of myself. So I don''t know how long I was like that but eventually I started feeling things again, slowly at first before increasing in number, and before I knew it I was in pain, like I was burning alive from the inside out. Once more a novel sensation but one I don''t think I''d care for very often regardless of the sick semi-pleasure I got out of it. A few moments after sensation started it stopped and I was able to see again, though it took me awhile to notice as I didn''t realize my eyes were closed for a while. I found myself, oddly enough, inside my sleeping bag....naked....and less muscular than before. So your shit doesn''t come back with you and the re-spawn ability has a price then I''m assuming. Good to know. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. I got out of my sleeping bag and noticed the sun was slightly higher than when I tried to play chicken with the ground. I didn''t have a watch and didn''t have the skill to tell time by the sun so I just shrugged and figured it took at least an hour or two before I revived. My thoughts were interrupted by the rumble of my stomach. It made since as I hadn''t eaten anything since last night before I passed out. Although that''s something to think about. Will what''s inside my body be reset as well? Will I need food every time I revive? OOO!! Maybe I never have to poop again if I just kill myself whenever I have to go, something to test. I also appreciate the free pseudo shower, though I have to wonder where, or when, it got the body it decided to give me. My food supplies were still good so I decided to treat myself with a bunch of junk food. Not the healthiest choice but I didn''t care, hell It wasn''t even certain if I actually needed "proper" nutrition now. Going over my options I decided on gorging myself on doughnuts and some dry luck charms, so what if it was childish. I was still naked at this point neither caring to dress or even having something to change into besides the remnants of the clothes from two days ago and the clothes on my corpse. The thought reminded me about my previous fate and I was curious as to what had happened to my old body so doughnut bag in hand I walked over the edge and looked down. Sure enough there was a very lovely, if a bit smushed, corpse splattered on the ground. It seemed like those clothes were not salvageable but I decided to check out my corpse anyway as I thought it''d be fun. Finishing the last doughnut in the bag I made my down from the roof. The trip was a bit uncomfortable this time as my junk kept scrapping against the wall but at least the discomfort was helping instill a desire to improve my abilities. Making it to the ground I walked around the building until I made it too my corpse. Rather belatedly I realized that I hadn''t taken off my weapons before jumping off the high dive and the bow and machete weren''t in very good shape. I wasn''t sure at the state of my knives but I would look for them after having my fun. Unfortunately the body was nowhere near intact enough for me to play with it like a puppet, morbid and extremely dark sure but hey I never claimed to be sane. I did catch a lucky break in that one of my legs was fairly intact and was no longer attached to my torso so I decided to keep it and use it as a weapon just for the sheer hilarity of it. Done playing with my corpse I decided to go out and see if I could find myself some good prey to hunt. I still hadn''t used my new skill to read through the help menu but I was a bit to excitable at the moment to patiently read through it, besides a familiar urge was making its presence known to me. It took me less than half the time it took me last night to find more victims, lucky me. The expressions the dumb creatures had when they saw a large naked man running at them while laughing like a maniac with a severed leg brandished above his head was priceless and would be a treasured memory for the rest of my life. They were so stunned in fact that I managed to run up to one and smack it in the fact with the appendage before they recovered enough to attack me. The fight was very long and left me extremely cut up, beating someone to death with a leg takes a long time even if they are a midget. Still it was one of the most enjoyable fights, and kills, that I''ve had so far. A familiar problem arose during the fight and didn''t calm down until long after the fight was over. It was curious to me as it was a rare thing for me, it was doubly strange as I didn''t feel sexually aroused mentally but my body was reacting like it was. I had no urge or inclination to take care of it. I wasn''t sure but I theorized it had something to do with the fact that I hadn''t ever felt this much emotion and excitement since I first entered puberty. Maybe it was like a second puberty? Whatever the case I wasn''t too concerned and after giving the goblins a brief once over, they didn''t have any more marbles, I started making my back towards my home. I briefly pondered over whether or not I should search for more clothes but I quickly realized it didn''t matter. Apparently once I calmed down my body finally let me know exactly how much damage it had actually taken....it was fatal. I shrugged to myself as the pain wasn''t really an issue but I wondered how I hadn''t noticed a dagger stuck in one of my kidneys. Still bleeding out was kind of boring and would take too long so I decided to enter the nearest house and do a quick experiment. Walking had gotten a bit hard and when I entered the house my vision had started to blur causing me to bump into random crap. Thankfully the kitchen was close by the entrance. I briefly flicked a light switch and was grateful to see that the power was still on, it was sort of necessary for what I wanted to do. I got lucky and found the silverware drawer on my second guess and quickly dumped the entirety of its contents inside the microwave. I knew you weren''t supposed to put metal inside the microwave and no theoretically why it was a bad idea but I had always wanted to see for myself. Since I was dying anyways why not have some fun no? So good news was that watching the microwave freak out and eventually explode was fucking cool. Bad news was burning spoons that are flying through the air really hurt when they hit your face. That was my second death in as many hours but at least I was enjoying myself. The whole death experience was the same as last time so it wasn''t as interesting. I did find it oddly peaceful so it didn''t mean though. After the same rebirth process I found myself back in my sleeping bag, naked once more. The strange thing was I was no weaker than last time. What did it mean? Was this my base state and would be how I always woke up when I re-spawned? Or was I was weakened by a certain amount each time and my state before I died the first time only far enough developed to warrant one downgrade? It was food for thought and would be something I would see if I could find out when I looked through the help menu, but first I was hungry again and I think I remembered there being a large bag of chips in my stash that I was looking forward to. I hope I can restrain from just killing myself every time I was full so I could eat more food. I''d try but there was no guarantee, especially if I got bored. Ooo is that a bag of Gummy Bears? I don''t remember picking those up. Chapter 5 AN: Might be a double release today and Friday depending on how I feel. On Saturday i''ll being going to Spain for a week so don''t expect a new chapter for a week or two starting from then. Besides that I note on the story, while this story will be dark and serious it will also have its silly humorous points as well. This is part due to my belief that it helps illustrate the MC''s madness and also in part because I feel to much seriousness can be a bad thing for a fic. Hope you enjoy the chapter, Ren Waya Chapter 5: Train like a Deranged Machine So the help menu ended up having a large amount of information, unfortunately most of it was pretty much useless at the moment. Don''t get me wrong reading through it all was definitely worth it and some of the stuff I read had me as giddy as a child on Christmas Eve. The problem was almost all of the features talked about haven''t had the appropriate patches added to make them available. Take the character sheet for instance, I could pull it up and see my stats as decided on by the system but I couldn''t do anything about it. Levels, experience points, skill acquisition and all that kind of stuff haven''t been implemented yet so my near death experience with eating a magical marble was currently pointless. Well maybe not pointless as I couldn''t die anymore and I''d get the features I was looking forward to before others. Still I was salivating in anticipation for one particular feature, the ability to alter your very being with both cosmetic and practical enhancements. Supposedly the system would only be available during the down period that every official update would have, ever two weeks, and the points used for the system were a little vague in the description of their acquisition. It was something along the lines of "at the discretion of the system", so probably completely random. One very important thing I had managed to figure out through some rather vague references in the "special" section of the help menu was that my stats could be improved through training and that my "base" stats would be permanent once the official update for that feature was added. I don''t know when that update would happen but I assumed such an important part of the new set of rules the world operated by would be fairly soon, either the first or second update. This meant that it was time to ignore everything other than training my body unfortunately. Also I managed to figure out why I healed every time I went to sleep. Apparently everyone had been given the ability to heal completely from everything but fatal wounds after a few hours of sleep. While the system is fairly cutthroat, in that it¡¯s very unforgiving, it doesn''t seem to want to completely wipe out humanity so it gave us a slight advantage so that a higher percentage could survive. There would be no automatic revives like I had though except for in rare cases as it wouldn''t be balanced. Revival items and abilities were supposedly going to be a feature at some point but I have no idea when that would be, so for now it seemed like I was the only immortal at this point. Speaking of re-spawns apparently my first conjecture was correct; every time I die there is a price to be had to re-spawn. That price was that I was reset at to my base state, meaning stats and level reset to beginnings, upon my return. Since neither the revival system nor stat system has been implemented yet I have apparently been resetting to the default average stats of humans, in general for mental stats and for my size group for physical ones. I had no idea if this was a good thing for me or not as I hadn''t known what my stats were before I died for the first time, a bit of an oversight but I didn''t care too much. While I knew I lost some strength for all I knew I had increased in all my other stats, or possibly been downgraded in everything. Guess no more experimenting for me, and I had so many ideas too such a shame. Still with my new understanding of the world mechanics I vowed to do my very best to abuse the fuck out of them. If stats can be increased through training and all non-fatal damage is fixed after a few hours of sleep then I can do near suicidal training and possibly get extreme amounts of benefits from it. Although if my guess is correct I''d also likely require an insane amount of food intake to fuel my growth, good thing no one else seems to be alive in the area. The system wouldn''t punish me for my actions right? The help menu didn''t mention anything about potential "bugs", exploits or fixing them. Then again I was also a "Beta Tester" now so maybe that''s something I was supposed to find and draw attention to. Even if that was the case I doubt I''d be penalized considering it would technically be in my duty...right? Ah well no use worrying about it, I''ll deal with shit as it hits the fan not before, more than that way. Course set and mind resolved I set about seeing just how far I could push my body before it gave out on me and forced me to recuperate. Thus began the most intense four hours of my life, side note apparently while nutrition didn''t seem to matter you still had to be careful about what you ate as throwing up a large amount of dissolved Gummy Bears wasn''t nearly as enjoyable as eating them was. I had focused almost entirely on trying to increase my strength during this session as it was the simplest stat for me to figure out training for to improve, I had ideas for the others but wanted to test my theory on the easiest one first. The result: I had over straining, tearing or snapping nearly every muscle in my body. Oddly enough when you do that it makes you lose control of your basic functions, such as bowel control....it wasn''t pretty. For the second time in less than twenty four hours I passed out again in my own filth. When I woke up I was on one hand grateful that it was actual healing you get when you slept instead of just something like injury reversal (or something similar) and on the other hand not as much. I was grateful as it did mean that physical training could be augmented since it relied on the healing, and subsequent strengthening, of damaged muscles. I was a bit less grateful as I took in the sight of my body. The results of my workout while not extreme were actually noticeable, there in lied the problem. I had trained my muscles unevenly, something that should have been obvious to happen but I didn''t really think about it, and as a result I was looking like a mix between a thin action figure and a lumpy ken doll. Sighing to myself I checked my stat menu and noticed a peculiarity. While my strength stat had indeed increased it had increased by a non-whole number. Instead of the base 10 that all my stats had been set to it was now a very odd 10.8 points. The only conclusion I could think of is that it had something to do with the....unevenness of my body. Still it could be worse; I could be even more uneven and have a super-giant right arm or something and be mistaken for the world''s most enthusiastic masturbator. All this meant was that I had to make sure to train myself as uniformly as possible. Throughout this entire train of thought I had been scarfing down food, proving my early theory correct. There was still light out but the sun was no more than an hour or so from setting by this point. I figured I''d just keep the cycle of training myself to the point that I broke, sleeping, eating then doing it all again until I had to restock on supplies or something else happened. I first worked on trying to work out my muscles to get a more uniform shape, though this was a bit hard with just relying on body weight exercises since it was my unconscious tendencies doing those that caused my problem in the first place. Still I think I managed well enough that after two hours I felt I could move on to trying to improve my agility stat. The way I decided to do this was to work on my flexibility, and boy did it hurt. While the pain from strengthening my muscles, even if I abused them to the point they broke, was faintly pleasurable in its own way training my flexibility just made me incredibly uncomfortable. Probably because I once more went overboard and ended up snapping a few ligaments, at least I think I did (I''ve never been good at biology), trying to go beyond limits. I think trying to do the splits was the worse as I was unused to feeling such pain in my groin. Much like before I ended up unable to move and quickly passed out on the ground once more, thankfully not in a pool of my own filth this time. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. I groaned when I woke up, phantom groin pain still oddly lingering despite being physically healed. It was night now and I had no idea what time it was but it mattered little and I quickly took to satisfying my already complaining stomach. My efforts to balance myself out were mostly successful as I was a lot less uneven with my strength now at 11.1. My agility had increased evenly apparently having gone from 10 all the way to 12 which was only half as surprising to me as it should have been. I only say half as surprising as I was currently absentmindedly scratching my crotch with my foot, something I had neither been able to do before nor realized that I was doing so. Continuing to eat I attempted to do the splits and was surprised that I almost could having about as fourth as much distance to the ground then when I first tried, although it was slightly uncomfortable still. I stayed in the same position as I figured that the any training I could get would be beneficial while I thought over my findings, limited as they were, so far. Currently physical stats seemed to be very easy to train up although there was a danger of making the increase uneven if you weren''t careful. I wasn''t sure if either the difficulty or danger of lopsided results would be a feature in the official update but it was something to keep in mind for now. Another thing was that unless I was mistaken the amount of sleep you had and the time it took to heal was entirely unrelated. The first couples times I slept I had gotten at least the normal 8 hours and had healed completely by the time I woke up. When I "slept" after training I got no more than half that amount and still woke up completely healed. I wasn''t certain if this meant the amount of time it took to heal my body was simply smaller than the amount of time I slept or if it was instantaneous but regardless it gave me options. Not having an alarm clock was annoying as it meant I couldn''t really run any comprehensive tests but I don''t think it''d be very practical to find and use one even if I so desired. With that final line of though I moved on to my new stat training idea, this time the focus was vitality. I wasn''t sure exactly what vitality did as neither the stat screen nor the help menu gave a description for them. There were no Hit Points, at least not yet, so currently that left either regeneration speed or physical toughness (it wasn''t stamina as I was pretty certain that''s what endurance was for). Either way the training would be the same....hurt myself, a lot. I knew I had some masochistic leanings but I always thought I was more a sadist but considering how much I''ve been hurting myself lately I guess not, I at least hoped they were equal. So good news was my training worked, bad news was I beat myself into unconsciousness. Maybe it wasn''t such a good idea to run repeatedly into the chimney stack, though I was curious why they had one in the first place. Still it got results as my vitality was up by a whole point. Probably only because I ran flat out into the wall a half dozen times as I certainly didn''t train for very long. I did notice however that my endurance hadn''t increased at all despite all my long activities. This led me to the conclusion that only certain activities increase each stat. I did wonder why that was as the stats seemed to serve no real purpose; they were basically just random numbers. Despite the actual improvements I had made I was still very much in the realm of a normal human, the only difference was the speed in which my body improved. On that note I tested it and vitality seems to be a mix of both toughness and regeneration at the moment. Pulled myself out of my thoughts I decide to move on to my next training session. Possibly because as a result of training for such a short time all I needed to eat was a single power bar before I was full although I had no idea how long I was out (it was still dark out but that''s all I could tell). The next stat I would try would be endurance and my plan? To run around in circles until I literally collapsed due to lack of oxygen. While this was my plan I absolutely despised running. It was useful and necessary, especially for keeping my body in shape, but I hate it. It was just too boring to do nothing but move my body for a long period of time, not even music helped all that much and I didn''t even have that. I could and would suck it up for the sake of training but that didn''t mean I wouldn''t do something to alleviate my boredom. Since my options were very limited I decided to practice juggling with some of my canned food. I had never been very coordinated before so juggling was always hard for me but it was the only activity I could think of, besides it was going to be my training for dexterity anyways (although I had no idea how to super charge training it). Imagine my surprise then when I was actually capable of running at a decent pace while juggling, granted it was a bit clumsy, three cans at a time. I couldn''t even do that standing still before. My conclusion was that I had lower than "average" dexterity before and the reset was actually favorable for me in that regard. Still as the minutes and eventually hours wore on it became increasingly difficult to concentrate on keeping the cans in motion. About two hours in I eventually reached a state that I had only had happen twice before. It was a state where I felt like I was actively burning up my body in order to keep moving. Before when this had happened I had promptly stopped as it had felt like I was burning up my life in my efforts, cheesy I know but both times happened when I was young and overly obsessed with anime. This time however I kept going as I believed that any potential damage would be healed when next I slept. The interesting thing about this state was that I no longer felt tired or short of breath when I reached it, all I felt was the burning sensation and a sharpening of my mind. I don''t know how long I continued to run for exactly but my best guess was a similar length of time as my two early sessions. Once I reached that point my body just shut down and I passed out before I even hit the ground. The last thing I noted before I lost consciousness was the fact that I had apparently kept juggling the cans without even noticing. When I woke up again I was nearly delirious with hunger and I wasn''t able to think rationally until after a few solid minutes of scarfing down food. When I regained control the first thing I did was make a mental note to bring up more supplies, I had almost finished all the perishable food and non-bottled water I had. The second thing I did was bring up my stat menu. What I was brought a wild and partially maniacal smile to my face. I know exactly how I''m going to train from now own MWUAHAHAHAHA. OK maybe laughing evilly in my head is not as cool as I thought it''d be. It¡¯s kind of sad really. I''ll make sure to do it out loud from now on.
NameTitleLevel
MaxBeta Tester
STR11.1VIT11
AGI13END14
DEX13WIL14
CNC14INT10
RCT10WIS10
Chapter 6: Encounter: cracks form AN: For those that have been thinking the MC is basically chuunibyuo, congratulations you caught it. There are reasons for this, MC was a lot like this when he was younger (middle school/high school), note how he hasn''t mentioned/thought about his previous relationships at all, so let that be food for thought. Another note is that this will likely be the last chapter from 1st person POV, at least from the MC perspective, for a while. Also more action will be making its way into the story as well. There was a good point that I''ve been focusing too much on the physiological aspect and less on the action. While that was intentional to a certain degree it got a bit out of hand, expect more descriptive battles from now on. Last note is a few things will be revealed this chapter along with a new important character so enjoy. STR = strength, AGI = agility, VIT = vitality, END = endurance, DEX = dexterity, WIL = willpower, CNC= concentration, INT = intelligence, RCT = reaction time, and WIS = wisdom. Chapter 6: Encounter: cracks form I spent the entirety of the next day combining different exercises in order to boost all my stats quickly. Unfortunately I couldn''t figure out any way of improving my intellect, wisdom or reaction time (as those are what I guessed the stats that I couldn''t increase meant). Funnily enough doing math problems repeatedly does not in fact help improve you intelligence, nor does solving mazes that I built myself. Still it wasn''t in vain as I finally ended up getting a whole number on my strength and managed to get all my stats, besides the aforementioned three, to twenty. The training had a very steep curve in terms of effort to results as it took me half the day just to get the last point in the stats. I did manage to find a decent way of improving my vitality that didn''t involve giving myself brain damage though, it was punching the ground! There was a cost paid though in the form of my now nearly depleted food and water reserves including my long term food so now I was getting ready to go supply pillaging. It was all worth it though as I could things now that I''ve only seen Olympic athletes do before. I was at the peak of human physical prowess, at least I think so but I''d test more later, although I did find it a bit odd that training my flexibility actually worked for improving my agility. One thinks of speed when they hear the word not the ability to put a foot on one¡¯s head but again thoughts for later. Now I was making my way back towards were I killed the group of goblins that I found the strange marble by. There was no real reason to do so, the homes closer by still had supplies I could take but I felt almost compelled to go back. If that was the only reason I wouldn''t have done so but there was a whisper in the back of my mind that kept getting stronger the closer I got and I was curious. I couldn''t understand what it was saying but as it kept getting louder I felt like I kept getting closer to understanding what it was telling me. Suddenly the whisper stopped and a tense feeling flooded the atmosphere causing me to ready my bow in response. It didn''t take long before I saw a threat, a group of six goblins chasing after an extremely abused looking woman. The woman had a fairly big lead on the goblins, which were still a bit out of my maximum range. I saw I had the ability to save her and I had an intense compulsion to keep her safe, so that''s what I did. I think my appearance startled the girl though I wasn''t sure as her face was shadowed by her hair making it hard to see her expression. I ran towards her knocking my arrow and pulling my bow as I did so, and as soon as I got in range I stopped, planted my feet and fired my arrow. It was a rather lucky shot as I didn''t give myself time to properly aim and set up while the goblin was a moving target at my max range but I ended up getting a hit to the lead creature''s heart. The goblins were only briefly surprised but that surprise quickly turned to anger which spurned them on causing a rather impressive increase in speed for such a small creature. By this point the woman had managed to run to me and hid a few feet behind my back. The goblins made quick time but I managed to shoot two down, one of my black arrows sticking out through their eye socket, before I dropped my bow and rushed out to meet them in melee as I didn''t want to involve the woman. I fought carefully drawing my longer machete in one hand and a goblin dagger in the other, keeping my two survival knives in reserve in my boots. I didn''t know how to fight with a weapon by itself let alone dual wield so the fight was savage as I duked it out with the remaining three monsters. The creatures weren''t very skilled with a blade either fortunately and came in staggered so it wasn''t as difficult as it could have been. The first one launched a surprisingly quick leaping thrust towards my chest which took my off guard. I had to desperately twist aside to avoid the blow and I still managed to get nicked on the side. Still he was off balance from his attack leaving me a perfect opportunity to finish it off. Fortunately my aim was true and I planted the shorter, and thus less cumbersome, dagger right into its face although this had the unintentional side effect of breaking of the blade in its skull. With the creatures being less than half my height on average it was difficult to fight them properly which was why I preferred to use my bow as much as possible. Still loss of weapon or not I had killed one of them before they could group up to attack me. The remaining two creatures were either smarter than their late companion or just more cautious as they ended up coming at me together after witnessing their friend''s demise. I managed to use my machete too block too scare one away during its attack but the other used that opportunity to cause I deep stab into my thigh. Hissing in pain but reveling in the excitement of battle my body was soon flooded by Adrenalin causing my heartbeat to pound in my ears and my vision to narrow. My brief inattention enabled the previous deflected goblin to have an opportunity to launch an attack on my side, luckily I was able to react in time to avoid a stab to the kidneys and get a gash across my stomach instead. The beats was unbalanced and vulnerable to attack, unfortunately the angle was too awkward to use my weapon to I quickly snapped my knee up into its side causing it to fly back a few feet unto its back. The other goblin once more came in for an attack but I had remembered him this time and had kept an eye on him in my peripherals. The poor creature didn''t get time to look surprised before I brought the machete down on his head like I was chopping wood, killing him instantly. The remaining goblin was still on the ground struggling to both breath and get up when I walked up to it and quickly stomped down on its throat, silencing it forever. Done with my battle I turned back to the woman I had just saved and I quickly started hyperventilating. The woman had a black arrow through her forehead and was staring at me with dead eyes. I was too stunned to move as she walked the short distance between us before looking up at me an asking a simple question. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. "Why didn''t you save me at the mall?" Then she was gone and I was left alone. Disorientated I start looking around and was once more surprised when I notice the goblin corpses were gone and all the signs of our battle had went with them. Then I started to remember, I remembered the mall and I promptly started screaming. I remembered a woman with lifeless eyes slowly staring up at me reaching her hand out for salvation and I had turned away. Then I was back, standing in the same spot and very confused. I was feeling vulnerable and instinctively reached for my bow in comfort only to feel myself grasping at air. Bringing my arm back to stare at my empty hand I noticed that my clothes were gone and then I remembered, I had lost those two days ago. Shaking my head to clear my thoughts and shake away the confusion I put the thoughts in the back of my mind trying to forget about them and continue walking towards the location of my previous real battle. It took a few more minutes before I made it to the scene of my fight and saw the very rancid corpses being feasted on by an assortment of birds. I briefly noted the lack of a human corpse before the thought was pushed to the back of my head and promptly forgotten. The whisper had disappeared before I even resumed my journey and the compulsion had left with it but I had still wanted to check the area out. I briefly go through the houses nearby managing to find a set of clothes, consisting of jeans and a blue turtleneck but no shoes that fit me well enough, though it was slightly small. I had also managed to refill my backpack full of supplies and was about to start walking back to my base before I once more felt a strange sensation. It wasn''t an urge or a compulsion this time, it was just a strange notion that checking out the only two story house on the block in order would be good. I was a little leery of strange feelings popping up in my head now but I decided to check the house out anyways. I readied my newest weapon, along with finally deciding to put on clothes I found myself a metal bat to use as a club as well. The first floor had turned up nothing of importance, just the usual amount of supplies a house would have and a few old corpses. On the second floor however I noticed something that didn''t belong, a faint rustling sound coming from above me. Narrowing my eyes I readied my bat and started locking for the attic entrance, which was rather easy to find not that I was looking up. When pulled down the latch and climbed that ladder into the attic I was shocked to see a child huddled in the corner. -POV Switch- I was so tired, so hungry but most of all so thirsty. I had been here for days now, although I wasn''t able to tell time as there were no windows and my phone had died long ago. My parent''s had yelled at me to come up here and stay there until they came to get me, I don''t know why but they had their no nonsense voice when they did so and I instantly did what I was told. I didn''t know what was happening, the blue screen had really confused me when it showed up and my parents yelling at me hadn''t helped. Of course the confusion quickly turned to fear when I started hearing screaming and I ended up crying myself to sleep while I covered my ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise. I awoke sometime next day I think, it was hard to tell as my phone was already dead when I tried to use it. My parents hadn''t come to get me yet so I was going to wait until they came for me like they said. I waited a long time and was soon thirsty; luckily there were a few bottles of water in the attic that I managed to find. There was no food though so I was still hungry but I kept waiting, my parents would come for me they also do what they say...always. As I continued to wait my water eventually ran out and now I was so tired that I slept most of the time. I was woken up by the sound of someone coming up the stairs, the sound jolting me awake causing me to move about slightly. It was my parents they came back like they said they would! I knew they would come, they never say things they don''t mean. My excitement gave me a new burst of energy and I positioned myself so that I could look at the attic entrance with bated breath. The entrance opened and I heard someone climbing the ladder which caused me to start crying with relief at being able to see my parents once more. Then I saw him, the sight of him instantly caused me to stop crying. He was a big man holding a bat and he looked nothing like my dad. The thought of why my dad wasn''t the one to get me briefly overlapped with the memory of panicked screams and that''s the last thing in my mind before everything went black. -POV switch back- It was a girl, roughly 9 or 10 years of age, looking like she had been stranded in a desert, complete with cracked dry lips and dark bags under her eyes. She had stared at me briefly before she apparently collapsed due to exhaustion or something else. I was confused as to what I was supposed to do; normally I would have helped her without hesitation but now? Now I didn''t feel anything when I looked at her, all I had was a logical conclusion that keeping her alive had no real benefit for me and had several costs associated with it. As heartless as it was I was about to abandon her when I saw them again, the two females from the house in their entire gory splendor. They were standing next to the child just staring at me. I stared back trying to determine what they were and what they wanted. This lasted about a minute before they started to speak in their weird whisper voice, this time in unison. "Why?" After saying that they paused, which confused me as I was expecting them to fade away like they usually did after asking their customary question. I had seen them a few times when I was dreaming always asking the same question but they hadn''t appeared while I was awake since that first night. I was about to try walking up to them and seeing if I provoked a response when they spoke again. "You could have saved us." With that they faded away leaving me alone once more. Their words shook me to the core and caused a sharp pain to appear in my head. As I struggled with the pain I realized what I was going to do with the child, and with my course set the pain faded much like my visitors had. AN: This is the last chapter from Max''s POV for a long while, hoped you like it. As for his strange visitors no they aren''t ghosts but that''s all I''ll say on the matter. Thanks for reading, Ren Waya Chapter 7: A Bond is Formed AN: I''m back, Spain was fun but I don''t speak Spanish at all so I''m glad to be back. No idea how often I''ll do updates now that my classes have started but they''ll come when they come. If you''re enjoying the story (or not enjoying it) please consider writing a review, or just giving the story a rating (I feed off of feedback/numbers of favs/follows) Chapter 7: A Bond is Formed I had was experiencing a very familiar comfortable feeling that I hadn''t experienced in a few years but I couldn''t remember what it was. It was nice though, made me feel safe, so I just buried myself further into the source of the feeling. My mouth felt icky but I didn''t want to move and risk losing the warmth surrounding my body. I don''t know how long I stayed there just enjoying the comfort but as time went by I started remembering why it felt so familiar. The last time I experienced this was when I was six. I had stayed up late on Christmas Eve as I was too excited to sleep but at some point I started feeling tired. I had closed my eyes and then I remember experiencing a similar sensation. I was being.... carried...that''s what it was. I was being carried to my bed as I had fallen asleep on the couch. I liked being carried, it made me feel safe and warm. I was sad though as that was the last time I remember being carried until now. My dad said it was because he was too old and I was too big, which made me upset. Wait...my...dad? Thinking of my daddy made me remember the attic and the fear. The thoughts made it hard for me to breathe and the safe feeling of being carried changed to fear as I started feeling constricted. I start frantically trying to get free, this wasn''t daddy, who was it!? My chest starts hurting more as it gets harder to breathe and when I jerk my eyes open everything is blurry and the light hurts to look at. The person carrying me tightens their arms around me as I start panicking, which only makes the suffocating feeling worse causing me to struggle harder. I didn''t like the feeling, it was scary, I wanted my daddy. I start crying and calling out for my daddy but I didn''t know if I was actually saying anything as all I heard was a ringing in my ears and trying to speak hurt. Suddenly the person took away their arms and it got easier to breathe but I was still scared, I wanted my dad. I huddled into myself as I continued crying and crying out for my dad. It was hard to tell how long I was crying but I eventually noticed my head was now lying in a lap while a hand stroked my hair. There were sounds coming from above me that seemed like they were words but I couldn''t understand them. They were soothing though and after a while I was able to stop crying though I was still scared. The sounds coming from above me had stopped once I finished crying but the hand continued stroking my hair helping me calm down a little. The sort of words got a bit louder but I couldn''t understand them still, there was still a little ringing in my ears but it was quickly fading. The words were repeated a few times before I was able to understand them. "What''s your name child?" The voice reminded me of my dad which excited me but when I looked up I saw an unfamiliar face I was left feeling sad and disappointed. My dad had always said to not trust strangers but he reminded me of him and I didn''t want to be left alone so I answered him. "...Fleur..." It was barely a whisper but apparently it was loud enough for him to hear as he gave me a warm smile as he stared down at me. His smile reminded me of my mom''s, she traveled a lot for work and I didn''t get to see her as often as I wanted but whenever she was with me she always had one of those same gentle smiles on her face. I relaxed a little more and was able to stop shaking when he spoke again. "Hi little flower, my name is Max. Are you hungry? Thirsty?" His words cause me to start crying again as that was what my daddy always called me. I wasn''t able to speak now so I just turned to the side and nodded as I continued to cry. The man''s, Max, words seemed to be sad when he spoke again. "Ok...I''ve got plenty of food and water for you when you feel up for it alright? Do you want me leave you alone now?" I nodded slightly as I continued to cry but as I felt him move me and get up to leave me alone I started panicking again. I didn''t want to be left alone again, what if he didn''t come back? So I grabbed onto his leg and stared up at him with crying eyes. He looked surprised briefly before his eye''s instantly softened as he gave a small, soft smile and seemed to nod in understanding. He sat back down, once more putting my head on his lap as he stroked my hair. He reminded me so much of my daddy that I kept feeling hurt when I realized that he wasn''t really him. But I didn''t want to be alone...so I cried and cried and cried. Throughout it all he just kept gently stroking my hair in silence, not moving at all save for his hand and the faint movements caused by his breathing. I don''t know how long I cried but I think I only stopped because I ran out of tears and my throat hurt a lot. Still the man sat there silently stroking my head. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. "water..." Croaking out the single word made my throat burn but I was too thirsty and needed something to drink. The man maintained his silence but seemed to hear me as he stopped his hand and reached into his backpack, taking out a water bottle. As soon as he handed it to me I quickly snatched it and drank its contents greedily. The water was slightly cool and it felt great as it soothed by burning throat. The bottle doesn''t last long and when I look at the man he had an apple in his hand. Apples were my favorite food so as soon as I saw it my stomach grumbled lightly and I once more quickly snatched it out of his hand. Much like the water it didn''t last long but despite that it was the best tasting apple that I ever remember having. As soon as I was done I noticed yet another bottle of water and an assortment of food ready nearby for me. I picked a bag of bread and a jar of peanut butter (I didn''t like jelly, it felt icky). My daddy usually made my sandwiches for me so I didn''t know what to do, there wasn''t a knife either so I just scooped up peanut butter with the bread slices and ate them like that. After finishing three "sandwiches" and the new bottle of water I finally feel full. Throughout my feast the man continued to remain quiet as I ate on his lap. Curious I look at his face and the amused expression present caused me to blush slightly over my actions. My parent''s had made sure I knew how to eat properly and had proper manners for when my mom took me to her important business dinners, so it was embarrassing to be seen not acting like a proper lady. "Feel better now?" Still embarrassed I just nod my head while avoiding eye contact. I feel as much as hear him chuckle lightly in response, which didn''t help my embarrassment at all. Still the feeling faded quickly as I once more remembered my current reality. The man must have noticed my change of mood as his voice was full of concern when he next spoke. "You ok? You want to talk about anything?" I struggle a bit as I contemplate his offer before managing to reply in a quiet, sad whisper. "My daddy isn''t coming back for me is he?" The man tensed up at my words briefly before returning to his normal state. He gave a sad, tired sigh before he quietly responded with a simple "No." His response almost made me start crying again, and I probably would have if my eyes had anymore tears left. My dad had lied to me; he had said he''d come get me. He never lied to me. Why did he leave me? "Why." It wasn''t really a question but the man seemed to take it as one and looked like he was struggling to give me an answer. "Sometimes that''s just how the world works." His words didn''t nothing to comfort me, if anything they left me feeling bitter. "I hate the world then, it made me alone." "You don''t have to be alone." His words made me angry and I screamed at him. "I don''t want to be alone but my daddy is gone and so is my mom! I have no one now! I hate the world, it''s not fair! It''s not fair...it¡¯s not fair!" My anger faded as quickly as it came and I started crying once more, apparently I still had a fear tears left. ".... You have me. I won''t leave you alone unless you want me to. I can''t replace your parents nor would I want or ever try to, but I can be your big brother if you want." His words just made me cry harder, it wasn''t what I wanted to hear. I wanted him to tell me he would find my parents, that he would bring my daddy back. But I knew why he didn''t...they were gone and I was alone now. The thought made me feel so much pain I gasped audibly as I struggled to breathe. I didn''t want to be alone, it brought back memories of the attic and the terror I felt as I hid there while my world crumbled around me. But I have never had a brother before. I was scared he would replace daddy one day and I would forget about him. I didn''t want that; the thought was almost as bad being alone. It came down to trusting him and his promise not to replace them or being alone. It wasn''t a hard choice but neither was it easy. "Don''t leave me alone.... big brother." I whispered, the raw fear and emotion I was feeling causing my voice to tremble. His eye''s softened as he smiled sadly and wrapped me in a hug as I continued to cry into his chest. "Never...little flower." AN: Shorter chapter than usual but it''s more of a bridging chapter from the sort of prologue arc and the first arc. Hope you liked it and thanks for reading, Ren Waya