Arrival
Sunlight hit Bash from every direction, blinding him.
Squinting painfully and blinking to clear the spots, Bash realized he was naked. Well, almost. The one thing keeping him modest was a thin loincloth hanging loosely from his hips. Peeking down, he quickly confirmed everything was accounted for and took note of just how skinny he had become. From slightly overweight in his past life to all skin and bones in this one.
Apparently, dying was the best crash diet.
Feeling off-balance in this new body, Bash shifted and could feel the soft grass tickling his bare feet. He wiggled his toes, one at a time, watching the individual blades respond.
This... is insane. Looking back up, the forest moved all around him. Trees swayed, shadows shifted, and small animals darted through the underbrush.
Reaching out mentally, the way he'd done in the void, he called out, 'Shai?' but no one answered. He tried again, this time out loud. “Hey, Shai, are you there?” But only the sounds of nature replied. Go figure. The one time he got a personal AI, it bailed on him. Probably off haunting the void, reciting error messages.
With a shrug, Bash refocused outward. Taking his first step forward, he wobbled. It was difficult to lift and move his legs, and his stamina bottomed out. The game was taking his one point of strength and dexterity seriously and had turned him into a walking brain on a stick.
Forcing his limbs to keep moving, Bash suffered through almost a dozen more shuffling movements before he had to stop, gasping, one hand braced against a tree trunk.
Ten feet. He'd made it ten feet and was winded. “Okay,” he wheezed. “Pure intelligence build was a dumb idea.” He let out a bitter snort. “Ironic.”
Movement caught his eye. A small creature had emerged from the underbrush and was watching him curiously. Some kind of fox-dog thing, rust-colored fur, pointed ears, about the size of a housecat.
Bash's face split into a grin. “Oh, hello there.” The creature cocked its head.
“Aren't you adorable?” Bash had always wanted a pet. The creature took a careful step closer, and Bash crouched down, holding out his hand.
“Come here, little guy. Come on.” His mind was already racing ahead. Animal companion. This was perfect. He'd build a little house by a lake somewhere, spend his days fishing, his nights by a fire with his loyal fox-dog curled up at his feet. The afterlife was looking up.
The creature crept closer, nose twitching. “That's it,” Bash cooed. “Good boy. Or girl. Whatever you are.”
It was close enough now that he could see the details. The wet nose. The bright eyes. The drool dripping from its jaws. Actually, that was a lot of drool.
Okay. Bash thought. So, it's a messy eater. No carpets in the lake house. Problem solved.
The creature was almost within arm's reach now. Bash wiggled his fingers invitingly. When a thought occurred to him. A small, quiet thought that should have occurred to him much sooner. Why would a wild animal walk up to a person?
“Oh shit!” The creature lunged, teeth sinking into his calf. Pain exploded up his leg. Bash tried to kick it off, but only managed to throw himself off balance. He went down screaming, back slamming into the dirt.
“Get off! GET OFF!” He thrashed pathetically, trying to shake the thing loose. The creature released his leg and scrambled up his body. Bash saw it coming and threw his hands up as it went for his face. Teeth clamped down on his wrist instead, and he screamed. The thing was latched on now, snarling, shaking its head back and forth. Each jerk made it worse. Blood sprayed across his face.
Think! Use your damn skills! Something flashed at the edge of his vision. Lines and symbols painted themselves all over the world. His Investigator skill had activated by pure luck or intuition.
The overlay highlighted a stick on the ground next to him. He grabbed it with his free hand and swung at the creature. The hit connected. Barely. His pathetic strength turned what should have been a solid blow into something closer to a gentle tap.
The thing released his arm, and for one blessed second, Bash thought it worked. Then it darted down and bit into his foot. Kicking again only earned him another bite. The creature was taking chunks now, tearing at his ankle, his shin, his toes, anywhere it could reach. And Bash was naked. Naked except for a loincloth. In a forest. Being eaten alive by a tiny animal.
“What sick freak programmed this game?!” He tried to crawl away. The thing followed, nipping at his heels, tearing flesh with every snap of its jaws. Blood left a trail behind him.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die because I put all my points into intelligence. His skill kept painting highlights onto everything. A rock. A mushroom. A particularly interesting patch of moss. All completely useless.
“Oh, good, a mushroom…” Bash choked out. He tried to kick at the creature but missed as it darted around behind him out of sight.
Ahead, something caught his eye. A red line hovering just above the ground, cutting across the forest floor. Please be a safe zone. Please be something. Anything. He crawled slowly, dragging himself forward with his bloody hands. The creature kept pace, kept biting, kept tearing.
His hand crossed the red line and grabbed dirt on the other side. A wall of text exploded into his vision, smug and Comic Sans, completely blocking his view.
How do I spend it?! He frantically searched his memory. There had been no tutorial. No instructions. Unless THIS was the tutorial. What a shit game. He wished he'd never uploaded himself. Why couldn't he just die like a normal person?
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The creature appeared again, biting his ankle and shaking its head, tearing another chunk off.
“MENU!” he shrieked. Nothing, Menu! he screamed in his head. A panel flickered open. Thank God. Through the blood in his eyes, Bash could see it, simple interface hovering in his vision.
The fox-dog launched itself at his face again, and the menu snapped shut. “NO!” Bash caught the thing by its throat, its jaws only inches from his nose. Teeth closed on empty air, then found his hand again.
He forced his panic down. Screaming wasn't working. He needed to focus. To will the damn thing open. The panel flickered back. Steadier this time. He could barely see it, could barely focus. The creature was right there, trying to tear out his throat. He found the stat allocation. Found strength. Dumped his point into it.
For a moment, nothing happened. The creature's jaws were still pressing toward his neck, his arms still shaking with the effort of holding it back. Then the notifications hit.
His muscles bulged. Mass appearing from nowhere, his stick-thin arms suddenly corded with actual tissue. The creature's eyes went wide. Bash's grip tightened. And he ripped its jaw in half.
Breathing hard. Bash lay there, staring at the ruin in his hands. The notifications still blocked most of his vision. He dismissed them one by one, each one taking effort. Beneath them, the creature's remains slowly came into view.
It was... not pretty. The little fox-dog thing was in pieces. Jaw hanging by a strip of flesh. Tongue lolling. Eyes still open, still surprised.
Bash dropped what was left and let his head fall back against the dirt. “Oh god,” he groaned. Everything hurt. He glanced down at his body. Blood everywhere. Bite marks on his legs, his hands, his feet. Chunks were missing from his calves.
But his arms... his arms were different now. Muscle where there hadn't been any before. Not heroic. Not monstrous. Just capable.
He opened the menu again. Easier this time. Easier when a hundred-pound bear wasn't actively eating you.
Yeah. he thought. If anyone asks, it was definitely a hundred pounds… or two hundred.
He had another free stat point from the level up. He put it into Constitution.
Bash scoffed. Doubling bonuses were basically free with stats this bad. He chuckled, the sound sliding into something unhinged. He repeated the exploit for Dexterity. Then Wisdom. Each time he half-expected the system to catch on, to slap him down, to call bullshit. It didn't.
The game was going berserk. His first real exploit, before he even learned to play. By the time the notification spam finally stopped, his vision was completely blocked. He couldn't see the forest. Couldn't see the sky. Just an endless stack of achievement pop-ups. “Seriously? Statsplaining is my least favorite genre.” he muttered.
Closing one revealed another underneath it. Each dismissal took a huge amount of focus and intent. Again. Again. Again. After the fourth one, he stopped fighting and opened the settings instead.
The menu slid open, blessedly functional. He easily found the notification frequency and filters. Whoever built this Shard must have understood what log spam did to a person. Bash moved through the settings fast, dialing everything down until he could finally see again.
Sighing with relief, he brought up the skill menu, curious about what he'd unlocked.
“Aren't you incredibly vague?” He stared at the description, waiting for something. Anything… He closed the menu and opened it again. Squinted at it harder, like that might help. Still nothing. “Cool. Super helpful.”
Bash looked down at his injuries again. Still nasty. Bite marks everywhere, blood drying on his skin. But the wounds had stopped bleeding. The deepest ones already looked days old instead of minutes. Thank god for game logic.
He pushed himself to his feet. His body responded differently now. Stronger. Faster. More coordinated. The stats had actually done something.
But the fear remained. Every rustle made him flinch, and Investigator was still firing from the panic, painting highlights on shit he didn't care about.
Taking a breath, Bash focused, Prediction didn’t seem to do anything, so he might as well try using Investigator again. At first it was chaotic, like it was when he fought the giant three-hundred-pound fox-dog.
As he strained, it became more organized. Sort of. He could see conditionals on the tree trunks. Loot markers in the grass. What looked like dev notes carved into a rock, except the text glitched when he tried to read it directly.
A dull ache bloomed behind his eyes. The deeper he looked, the more it hurt, like flexing a muscle he'd never used before.
The notification blinked quietly at the edge of his vision, still noticeable, but no longer blinding. Right. I turned the volume down on those.
Creeping through the forest, his eyes darted everywhere. A branch snapped somewhere to his left and he spun, fists raised. Nothing… Just a bird. “Get it together,” he muttered. “Get it together!” he said louder, almost shouting.
Something burst from the bushes directly ahead of him. Bash squealed and kicked on pure instinct. His foot connected with the squirrel mid-leap. And with his new stats, the kick had actual force behind it.
The squirrel exploded. Just... exploded. Into a fine mist of blood and fur and tiny bones. The spray caught Bash across the chest, adding to the fox-dog blood already drying there.
He stood frozen, leg still extended, staring at the wet red smear where the fuzzy rodent used to be.
“...”
“...”
“I regret nothing.”
He kept moving, twitching at every sound, Investigator scanning for threats. A faint shimmer caught his eye. A red dotted line hovering just above the moss and leaves, running perpendicular to his path.
Another boundary. Last time he'd crossed one of these, he'd leveled up. Of course, he'd also been getting his face eaten at the time, so the memory was a bit tainted.
He crouched, tracing the line with his gaze. Every few feet, little markers blinked faintly: start points, trigger zones, invisible boundaries. Everything was neatly defined in the Shard's metadata. A quest boundary. A full-blown event waited here in this abandoned Shard.
“Alright, game,” he said, voice only slightly shaky. “Let's see what happens when I cross your little line.” He stepped over it. A chime echoed, and a new message appeared.
Smoke drifted from ahead and shouting carried over the wind. Bash carefully crested the hill, worried his wardrobe might expose more than just his position.
The village that came into view huddled in a shallow valley. A mix of stone and timber-frame buildings lined narrow roads. The kind of place that would look peaceful, if not for the fire.
Enjoying the story? Follow to get notified when new chapters drop.
Fox-Dog Sends His Regards!