When her eyes found focus, Anni was falling again.
She frowned down at her starting lake. It was big, possibly kilometers long. It had an irregular, boot-ish shape, with most of its banks covered in reeds, but some areas of dirt, sand, or large rocks.
The reeds nearest her splashdown point were where she’d met the snake that had ended her last attempt, which was some serious bullshit. She remembered reading somewhere that river snakes weren’t even supposed to be dangerous!... Granted it had been tree-sized, but still!
There was a river outlet at the bottom middle of the boot, and a big towering structure far past the top of the boot. Everything she could see was inside a raised kind of valley between several mountains. It might have been scenic If it were less terrifying. Also, it really hadn't been her imagination: She really had... died those times...
Anni shook those thoughts away and re-re-refocused. She controlled her fall with practiced ease, aiming for the only part of the lake deep enough to survive. She went through her mental checklist: Don’t panic, deep breaths, arms and legs straight on entry, kick off from the bottom…
You can do this.
She swam away from those reeds, and eventually managed to claw her way out of the freezing lake for the first time.
She took a moment, kneeling there on the rocky shore, to cough up a good amount of pond and scum.
Fucking finally! Progress! If this works consistently, then I can-
The triumphant thought was cut short, along with the rest of her consciousness, when someone threw a big rock at the back of her head.
When his eyes creaked open, Dan had his back against a palm tree. He frowned at his surroundings.
Here again? Stupid beach… hmm?
The thoughts drifted slowly through his sleep addled mind, eventually sinking to the back of it. It was a poor feeling, as he reached for where he normally kept his meds on his side table.
The zipper tabs on his travel backpack jangled.
Dan’s eyes had found their way back to being closed against the brightness of the rising sun, and he had to repeat the process of cajoling them open.
He squinted at the bag as he patted around it to find the pocket that rattled like pills.
Opening the bottle, he saw only five capsules, and somewhere in the murky bog of his morning brain, the idea ‘tha’s too low’ burbled whinily to the surface. He didn't notice how his thoughts slurred, moving almost entirely on instinct.
His loss-avoidance reflex answered: Could I take less so it las's longer?
More squinting. Someone was talking to him, but he couldn't hear them properly.
“Dannon Byrnik, adderall, blah blah blah, one-eighty mig, one perday.” He mumbled aloud; reading just to remind himself, as he swallowed one with a sip of the water bottle from his lap.
Reading label’s annoying. Gotta ‘member it nex’time.
He closed the bottles and his eyes.
Dannon…Tha’s my name, right? ‘S gotta be.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, only to find it still dead. He dropped it with a sigh, and accidentally dozed off again.
The heady haze of morning drowsiness stole a solid minute or two as Dan sat there against his tree, just trying to convince himself he was awake, before a glint of light in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
Dan had many issues with the pugnacious little pinpoint, but the one that finally started his excogitative engines was the simple fact that his eyes were still closed…
What the shucking fit!??!
Something inside him finally snapped back into place and he was suddenly wide awake. His sharp gaze flitted through his surroundings, as the stress pulled his back taught.
Empty beach and rough ocean stretched away from him as far as he could see. The shiny whatsit from earlier was a few meters away on a sand dune, right next to… his shoe? Dan glanced down and sure enough, he only had one. His wallet was open in his lap, and his driver’s license was in the sand near where he’d dropped his dead phone. He was wearing comfy pj pants, and a long sleeve shirt with… an unfamiliar design?
I should probably know what that’s supposed to be… or is it not my shirt?
Dan scratched his itchy, stubbly face as he mused.
Memory loss… or mental tampering? Cognitive functions impaired? Just a dream? Drugged again?
Dan tried to take stock of his situation. He tried to connect imaginary dots from the last thing he remembered to where he was now.
The rain, the plane, the dames... Wait, is this isekai castaway? Like that shitty harem novel? That couldn't possibly be how it works, can it? That whatever you're reading while you die is where your soul goes? This is what I get for reading suspicious books...
["That definitely isn't how it works."]
A lit-rpg-esque textbox appeared in Dan's vision, as a cutesy anime girl voice said the text aloud, and Dan flinched a solid foot into the air.
Before he could do more than wonder, the voice continued, and a new box appeared.
["Alright dude, chill. Sorry for the scare."]
There was a pause as Dan took a few deep breaths, a sip from his nearby water bottle, and his time. Just as he was about to ask the mysterious voice... anything at all really, he hadn't decided, a huge wall of text appeared in his view.
["I don't know how much you remember, but there's no immediate danger, and I am friendly. My name is Emmi, and this island is called (Intimation)... Yes, I know that's a dumb name for an island, I didn't pick it. Anyway the long-story-short here is that you've been chosen to slay the Demon King, I'm your standard issue, unique isekai cheat power, and this entire dimension is fourteen-ish loosely assembled death-games in a trench coat, pretending to be a normal island. I've been waiting a while for your ass to wake up, and I'd love to tell you literally everything about it, but unfortunately most of the useful info is gated by your personal experiences. Also, if you die, I'm pretty sure I go as well, and yes I can read your mind. Don't act weirded out, I've already told you that I know you're into it, and also everything else about you... except for your life and history, since you were magically amnesiatic while I was being born."}
Dan's mind continued to spin up, and into the processes of understanding what Emmi said. The new information came in thick and fast, but it all fit pretty well with the notion of 'castaway isekai'. Dan couldn't quite bring himself to believe it yet, but he felt like playing along was probably for the best. He could always freak out later, if need be.
"So now what?"
["I told you, I can read your mind, you don't need to talk."]
"Talking feels more civilized. I'll probs leave the telepathy for the bedroom... What do we do now?"
When ten entire seconds had passed without a new textbox, Dan shrugged, and started gathering his things together.
At some point, the mysterious shiny by his wayward shoe had stopped its little eyelid-piercing alarm-clock light trick. That might have made it difficult to find, but luckily the little golden ring was plenty reflective without it, and easily caught both the sun and his eye.
Dan inspected it with one hand as he tried to brush the sand from his bare sock with the other, to avoid getting too much in his shoe. Even in a dream, sand was such a pain. When nothing about the simple golden band caught his attention, he tossed it in his bag with the rest of his stuff, and almost immediately forgot about it, because that was when Emmi returned.
["Yeah, I've got nothing. I spent all my time trying to bypass info restrictions, so idk specifically where we are, like in relation to any points of interest, or any amount of what to do next."]
"Nothing at all?"
["Probably look for people, food, and shelter? In that order, obviously. You've got a month or so before the next challenge, so maybe gear up for that? Your guess is as good as mine, my dude."]
"Challenge?"
["Think somewhere between game-show challenges and saw-traps. Also sometimes xxx-rated, and usually broadcasted interdimensionaly."]
Emmi's words were bleak, but they let Dan focus on something instead of spiraling into panic about the uncountable unknowns he had been inundated with. "That seems... pretty fucked up? What's your take on the scum-sucker in charge of this mess?"
["That would be the Demon King you're supposed to kill."]
"And we're talking Frieren demons, not Devil-part-timer?"
["I don't know what those are. The guy's title is 'Demon King of Torment', though, so maybe that helps your conscience?"]
"It does, actually. Yeah." Dan sighed, and after a final glance around, decided he was ready. He eenie-meenie-miney-moe’d the two directions of beach, and set off south along the winner.
["I wish I could help at all with a vector of purpose, but I already set a quest for it, and that did nothing. Y'know that whole part of the system is held together with chewing gum and wish magic?"]
"Really?"
["It says that rewards have to be appropriate, and proportional, but there's no elaboration on that! I tried testing a few things, and the highest difficulty rated quest that I was able to give you actually autocompleted!"]
Wish magic sounded... Strong? Costly? So dangerous as a minimum. "What'd the auto-quest reward?"
["That ring you picked up. Kinda lame."]
"Well what was the quest?"
["Find one specific lost item, with the searching area being the entire island."]
"How'd that autocomplete?"
["Dude, your shoe was less than a meter away."]
"Meters?"
["What about 'em?"]
The conversation was engaging, if not immediately useful, and Dan met no resistance as he trudged across the beach.
Four~ish hours after he started walking, Dan stopped to rest in the patch of shade under a big cluster of coconut trees. He was in pretty good shape, but the sun and the excessively fine sand had made the going hot and difficult. Emmi was trying to describe how magic worked in this perverted purgatory, when she suddenly interrupted herself.
["Oh! I should've made a quest for all this exercise! Then we can up your stats, and-... Oops."]
In his exhaustion, it took a second for Dan to realize her mistake. "My whats?"
Half a day after getting her otherworld debut rocked, Anni woke to a horribly clashing duet of percussion in her head.
Looking back, she would realize that it was an interplay between a horse’s gallop, and her own heartbeat. She would eventually recognize the mountain trail her captors were using, and even launch an ambush on them near this very spot…
At the time, however, she was nowhere near lucid enough for that, and in fact, it only barely occurred to her that she was naked. Even when it did, her first thought was to lament the money she'd spent on the schoolgirl outfit, and only after that did she realize her situation. Her struggles against her bindings were muted by pain and exhaustion, but Anni still managed to slip her way off of her captor’s horse.
Unfortunately, her precipitous escape had her bounce-sliding down a rather steep slope, into some rather thorny bushes.
Fortunately, the bushes broke her fall, and nobody tried to follow her down.
Unfortunately, she learned exactly why not, when a long vine-like tendril wrapped itself around one of her legs and dragged her off through the underbrush.
Fortunately, she was able to shield her face with her hands enough to keep most of the thorny dirt out of her eyes.
Unfortunately, when the dragging stopped and Anni opened her eyes, she still didn’t have her glasses on, and so could barely see. From the way the blood ran to her head, at least, Anni could tell she was upside down. Squinting at her surroundings, Anni thought she was hanging from a moderately large tree, and below her some pink and green blur was doing something she couldn’t see.
Fortunately, she lived long enough after that to reflect on this attempt’s mistakes… and not too much longer.
Her next few tries involved reaching the shore at various points around her starting lake, striving for a consistently replicable escape strategy...
Anni had no compass, but she would eventually learn that her initial point of lacustrine egress was to the west. The people that had attacked her there were tribally-tattooed grey aliens, and their territory was dotted with not only excruciating hunting traps, but also the beasts said traps were presumably aimed at. After slowly bleeding out in her third pit-trap, she started trying other areas.
A heard of territorially aggressive cow-things trampled her.
She was torn apart by dog-sized velociraptors.
She was bitten by a venomous dragonfly.
She was carried off to the lair of a cannibal necromancer cult by a hoard of zombies.
Squashed by a moose coveredin strange mushrooms.
Swallowed by some kind of toxic ooze.
Skewered by a giant wasp.
Desicated by a weird butterfly.
Impaled by a turret trap.
Strangled by an evil sarcophagus.
Swarmed by little fairy-sized imps.
Decapitated by a tentacle tree.
Suffocated in a flesh-pit.
Mauled by monkies.
Stinging insects.
A crow the size of a minivan.
A pack of dire-wolves.
Flying leeches.
Spine-centipede.
Monitor lizard.
Quicksand.
Lionfish.
Tree-beast.
Bears.
Anni was crushed to death by a rockslide, then when she tried waiting in a safe place for it to pass, she was crushed by something so large that she never saw what it was, just that it was green-grey in color.
Her best attempt at the lake began when she climbed up a ridge to the north, and found herself swamped by a massive swarm of little gold coin-looking things. They picked her up and carried her into a cave, where she met a very nice and shiny, if naked, yellow lady.
The lady introduced herself as the queen of the coin’s hive, and offered Anni some tea. The tea was astringent, but extremely calming, and Anni soon found herself unable to keep any secrets from the golden monarch. They chatted and laughed about friendly things together for hours and hours, until Anni eventually fell asleep.
Her second visit to the hive had seen her eaten alive by the coins at first contact, before she even saw the cave.
In the tunnels and chambers beneath the castle of the Demon King, in the magical equivalent of a dimensional server room, in a state of distress, a certain purple demoness was hurriedly conducting a diagnostic ritual.
The flow of time on the island had been skipping like a bad record for what amounted to weeks, and this loop was the first time she had been able to access the latwork for long enough to accomplish anything.
The ritual’s progress icon finished spinning, and displayed its conclusions: Installation lag was affecting some processes, resulting in a glitched designation, where a [Player] was incorrectly remarked as [Fodder]. Normally, that wouldn't matter, but the demotion caused the girl's lowest tier time-loop ability to underflow into one of highest tier… Of course it would be her fault. Everything was these days, wasn’t it?
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Her intervention, debugging those weirdos had immediately borne even weirder fruits, one of which was currently installing itself in the hardrunes of the island’s Solid State Arrays via the Central Processing Obelisk... That really wasn’t supposed to happen during operation, but it wasn’t as if the magical laws of this reality could just be turned off and on again, so it made sense for the admagistrative systems to hit a snag or two in the interim.
The demoness quickly moved to isolate the castle from the island’s annoying temporal hiccups, and four hours later the loop reset before she could finish, effectively undoing all her work.
Several tries later, when she finally managed it, she made her report on the issue to her father… only to learn that the hateful cur hadn’t even noticed the skipping in the first place, and her exceptionally swift resolution, would not be rewarded.
The river’s steady clip ate a good three meters per second, as Anni floated carefully along its rapids, rushing down a mountain, pretending to be dead. She held some kelp(?) around herself, and kept her body very still and loose, letting it follow the current like a dwarf in a barrel.
This was, to her knowledge, the only possible way to exit the lake without losing what little clothing she had. It was also the only stretch of time where she could be sure nothing would try to jump her while she was distracted. She gathered her nerves.
“Show status.” She whispered the words aloud, once thinking them yielded no results. She desperately hoped this adventure would include some kind of progression. Knowledge gates went poorly with trial and error.
“Start, info, help, menu-”
The screen made a noise as it appeared. A kind of... Bwooweep!
Greetings! Welcome, new [fffffff0dd3r] to the island [Intimation]
Notice: Your home dimension is magically barren. Encounter magic to attune your magical affinity.
Notice: Your home dimension is dimensionally isolated. You have no rights under any interdimensional treaty.
You will be assigned the [Victim System]. Grow your your [Suffering], and become [Less Useless].
Your status has been rated:
Aniron Honemashite: Level 0
Class:Fodder
Physiological:120/120
Paraphysical:-ER/240
Physiculpable:56/70
Physical:14
Epiphysical:18
Endophysical:11
Nonphysical:24
Psychophysical:15
Aphysical:9
Astrophysical:-13
Metaphysical:22
Diaphysical:2
Physiclical:7
Geophysical:5
Anni stared at the little stat screen. Through an effort of sheer will, she managed not to scream or shout.
And when she finally asked, “What… does any of that mean?” it was in a whisper.
As if in answer, the box closed itself due to inactivity. Anni did the only thing she could: She continued waiting and thinking and floating along down the river, and tried very hard not to cry.
This was fine. Everything was totally, completely fine.
Whatever ran this system seemed to think she was fodder, and that she’d just lie down and die because it said she should. Fuck that. Anni had infinite tries, and she would drown this shitty island in her own damned blood if she needed to, and she…
Anni grit her teeth.
I guess I’ve internalized my death as a strategy now…
Her watery transportation was kind enough to hide her tears, if not her sobbing. Crying like this helped nothing, and it put her in danger… But the tears felt right, so she let them flow, and when she did return her attention to her stats, she felt refreshed.
The system had called it a rating, so she would have to assume they corresponded to her actual attributes, as a normal human. The three at the top must be… Health, Mana and Stamina? The way they were written as resources meant there wasn’t much else they could be, and the one with the error was clearly her mana stat, judging by that first notice.
The real issue was the other TEN. The D&D classic six might be in there somewhere, but the extra four meant that process of elimination was probably out of the question. Actually, wait…
Anni’s ‘nonphysical’ stat lined up exactly with the un-errored part of her mana, meaning it was probably the equivalent to INT, or something similar. She realized she could probably figure each of them out… some way or another.
I’ll just have to hope the shitty ones aren’t anything important…
She pulled up her screen again to see if it had at least updated any of the names. It hadn’t.
This system sucks turkey eggs through a hose.
Eventually, the river brought her over a little waterfall, into another lake. It seemed similar to her starting point, but with faster currents, and-
OHMYGOD what is that!?
A long pink tentacle undulated towards her, from deep underwater. Anni tried to swim away, but it caught her hair, and dragged her back with it into the depths of this new, (apparently) unreasonably deep lake. She managed to struggle and thrash her way out of the first tentacle’s grip, but by then more tentacles had come, and she was surrounded.
The last thought to cross Anni’s drowning mind in that attempt was: ‘Of fucking course there’s a kraken…’
In her very next try, she avoided it easily, by letting it grab some of her kelp.
“Status”
Nothing happened for a few seconds…
Then, Ping!!
[Name: Dannon Byrnik]
[Species: Human]
[Gender: @%$$#King]
[Age: 28]
[$^atus: No Sta#42]
[Active Quests: empty]
[Current Quests:]
(Get head)
Details: Defeat the Demon King, take his head, and free the island of his foul control. Assigned by a system admin.
Reward: ??????(??????)
(Unalone)
Details: Safety in numbers isn’t complicated, forehead. Find people.
Reward: New friends! (Yay!)
(Recon)
Details: Forewarned is forearmed. Lay low, get the lay of the land, don’t get laid out, so eventually you can lay down the law.
Reward: Minor resources(Uncommon)
[Repeatable Quests:]
(Thirsty;)
Details: Hydrate before you die-drate. Drink the last bit of your bottle's contents, and I’ll refill it for free! Yes, that is worded strangely. I'm testing something.
[Completed Quests:]
2 X (Thirsty;)
Reward: Refill
(Nameless)
Reward Failed?: Answers?
(Long Lost Shoe)
Details: Somewhere on the entire island is a shoe that perfectly matches the one you’re wearing. Find it, and claim it as your own.
Reward Claimed: additional small random treasure(Unique)
Yes, this explained SO much… and yet also nothing? Did it help anything? Emmi's frustration with her own forgetfulness seemed genuine enough. Then she started whining about something that the system kept censoring, so he couldn't hear, let alone understand her, and he tuned oout the noise.
He pulled the ring out of his bag, and asked Emmi to identify it.
["It's a (ring of passable stringcraft) It'll boost your string magic, as well as any abilities based around string, weaving, and thread. It grants the itokinesis and itogenesis skills at low level."]
"Kinda underwhelming, but I guess it was random." Dan slipped it on, and felt nothing change. "Can you set (unalone) to be my active quest?"
["...huh."]
["I can certainly try..."]
The little twinkle he saw in the distance confirmed his suspicions. Quest guidance? That's gonna be pretty good if it works like I think.
["It does, and is, yeah. You're welcome, lol."]
Dan sigh-chuckled. Telepathy is way too sensual. It makes me feel like a pervert. He directed the thought at Emmi, and his companion didn't respond. There was a lot to unpack there, that Dan would much rather ignore completely, so he tried changing the subject.
"Did I guess lucky, directionally speaking?" Dan asked aloud, "Or was it gonna point the direction I’d picked either way?"
["I have no clue, I told you the quest system is just wishes and dreams. Until you said something, there was no option to have an active quest."]
"Whatever." Dan yawned, and started walking again. An hour or so later, when Dan finally saw the people his quest was pointing him to, he perked right back up, and quickened his pace.
It was group of four people, so far as he could see. One of them was blue and shiny all over, probably some kind of bodysuit. Over the shiny suit, she wore what looked like a belly dancer outfit… made entirely out of bridal veils and dirty dreams. At her feet, a small, pale, blonde woman, sat in a skimpy green bikini, the sand, and obvious distress.
Someone with dark hair and a whitish lab coat looked to be bandaging the blonde’s arm, though Dan couldn’t quite see from so far away. Standing over them was a plump, tall, brunette woman, wearing a rich, poofy, minstrel’s outfit with rich furs and bright colors. The tall minstrel woman also carried a large, intricate, two-stringed instrument.
Definitely a motley group, but strange people were almost always better than solitude, and hopefully, they’d know literally anything about what was happening.
After solving her kraken problem so easily, Anni was entirely unprepared for what came next. She hadn’t particularly kept track of her total number of deaths, but she knew that it took seventeen tries to even see what was happening when the horrifying bipedal spider-creature ambushed her, stabbing its spear through her neck.
When her attempts to explore the banks at any point on her starting river were hampered by overwhelming monsters at every turn, Anni had finally decided to follow it’s flow as far as it would take her… Apparently, it took her right into the path of this naked-person-looking, freaky spider thing.
The first time it had speared her through the chest before she had even known it was there, was also the first time she had died frustrated, rather than terrified. This spider was the only thing, (so far), to pay her any attention as she floated along playing aqua-possum. The severely lacking alternatives meant that Anni hadn’t wanted to just give up on her river strategy, so she had tried again and again. Each time, she had tried to keep a better eye out, with the idea being that once she knew what was wrong, she could make plans for the next attempts… But eventually she had to give up on seeing the attack coming… for her sanity, if nothing else.
Landing upstream and sneaking her way closer had at least let her see the thing. It was a muscular humanoid, more than two meters tall. It wore no clothes or armor over its shiny, light-ish grey skin, but two of its six arms were used as a bra at most times. The other four wielded an overly long fishing spear with what Anni could only assume was skill, having none herself for reference.
Like most of the creatures she’d come across, it would’ve been monster-girl-style attractive, if not for one horrible feature. In this case, that was the awful, nightmare inducing spider-face.
As nice as it was to finally know what had been killing her, the info didn’t help much. Even after watching it for a while, all Anni learned was that this thing just watched the river all day, possibly for days at a time.
Anni knew from previous attempts that if she survived long enough she would get hungry, and even getting this far required almost two full days of floating downstream.
Slowly, carefully, she moved to leave her spot behind some bushes… She glanced down at the shrubbery, and idly realized they were the same kind that had broken her fall, during that first onshore attempt with the kidnappers and the flower monster.
The second she looked away, the spider-thing hurled its spear at her, the hefty shaft bit into her thigh, shattering bone and probably hitting an important artery.
“Gyhaaaa! What’s your shiting problem?!” Anni demanded, clutching at her leg and perhaps hoping her volume would attract other predators.
The creature walked forward, tilting its repulsive head, like a curious pet… She never expected the thing to talk. None of the other monster-girl-things had talked.
“The creature stalking, wishes for talking?” rasped the spider… without moving its face?
“You-you’re… wearing a mask?”
A sound came, that might have been some kind of hissing laugh.
“She dons the fearsome visage for battles. Sight comes not from the chitin, little one.”
If Anni had been less actively bleeding to death, she might’ve thought this was really cool. Communicating with a wholly alien species was exactly the kind of fantastic adventure she’d always been interested in… Hadn’t that been why she'd wanted to hit yes on that mysterious text box? Imminent death in a plane explosion had forced her hand, but the want of adventure had been there, hadn't it?
“I… Sorry, I thought you were a monster, like- like one of the things upriver.”
The huntress flinched, and slowly lifted the awful mask.
“Well, she had thought you as a creeping ghoul. Mammalia are seldom seen so east.”
The face that appeared was… still distinctly spider-like, but compared to the mask’s hairy, trypophobic horror show, it was downright pretty.
Whatever. Gather info for next time, she told herself, grasping at anything to distract her from the spear still embedded in her leg.
Anni saw a pair of normal non-compound eyes, sat right where they would be on a human, with a symmetrical pattern of secondary eyes around them. The compound nature of the extra eyes meant they were completely black, so Anni’s brain read them as beauty marks. Those, along with the cute button nose, sleek eyebrows, and high cheekbones gave the huntress an air of nobility… that was completely ruined, both by plush, overly full lips, and a delightfully perky black ponytail.
Would, Anni thought, before she could stop herself. Then, attempting to disabuse herself of such ideas, she tried to focus on the little tusk-looking things, just barely poking out of those… DSL.
She tried to imagine them unfolding into a predator mouth… But this backfired spectacularly, and she felt herself blushing, even growing lightheaded… though actually that was probably the blood loss.
This was not the kind of info I wanted to gather, Anni whined to herself.
The terrib-beautiful tusks wiggled a little as the spider asked, “Should that she lets the injured mammal live, carries it to her village on her back, what promise could the sneaky mammal give, that it would not take that chance to attack?”
Anni found herself saying, “Yurr really pretty,” as she fainted from blood loss.
In her next attempt, she tried to safely contact the spider-lady, now that she knew she was sapient/friendly.
The spear through her chest helped Anni to realized that what she’d thought was a respawn system, was actually closer to a time loop. It was nice to know, of course, potentially opening new options for her… eventually. At the moment though, her best lead and main goal, was still to make it to the spider's village without bleeding to death.
It took a few more of the multiple-day-long attempts, but eventually, a lucky dodge on her part meant that she only had a normal crippling leg wound, rather than a deadly one.
While being carried princess-style through the forest by the spider-huntress, Anni learned that her name was ‘Whooshy’.
“Za’s a pretty name.”
“Perhaps it is, yet it is also true; she moves at speeds that make the sound of wind.”
Anni found herself relaxing into Whooshy’s warm embrace. For the first time in… She didn’t- couldn’t know how long she had… How many times she… She had…
No, it didn’t matter. At least for now, Anni was safe. And so, she slept.
Dan’s light jog soon ate up the intervening stretch of sand, and as it did, both his view and his situational awareness got better. The four women had stopped talking, and the two unoccupied by the blonde’s injury were watching his approach. They stood around a campfire, and a weird pressboard hovel leaned against the trees nearby, looking like a large dog-house, made from cheap cabinets and twine. He slowed to a walk, giving himself time to think of what to say…
What even was his goal here? Join a group? Don’t end up alone again? Were these women real, or just quest NPCs? Or both? No, that didn’t matter. Did they get there in a group? Was he weird for being alone? Or for being the only man? What if they thought he ate his teammates!?
Statistically speaking, how likely is it that I’d’ve found them without that quest? More importantly, will they realize that it’s odd, and ask about it? How much should I tell them? No, that’s stupid. I don’t know enough about anything to have secrets at this point. They don’t look sinister, do they? Maybe they won't be affected by my curse?
When he looked up to check, the tall musician was waving at him, so he waved back and couldn’t help flashing her a grin, as the simple friendly motion upended his thought process, replacing it with: ‘She’s pretty… ‘
But as he thought that, he realized that… her hair was… strange? Not any of the usual brown hair colors, it was closer to a metallic beige. Like if rose-gold was made with cardboard instead of roses…
No, this’ll be fine. Odds are, they’re as stranded as I am. This is just social anxiety, and I have nothing to worry… about… This won't end up like that accursed book!
What he saw then, derailed not only his train of thought… but perhaps his entire worldview.
The shiny blue lady… she wasn’t wearing a suit, that was her skin. With plain, generic features, and an hourglass figure, she looked roughly like a sex toy carved from solid, translucent sapphire...
Despite her lascivious attire, she held herself with an innocent, almost excited air. As he watched, she glanced around, and she… She jiggled when she moved?
A slime girl.
Emmi's explanation, and the system boxes earlier were one thing, but this was an actual real monster girl… was this the cause for his concern? Dan felt very strongly about the fact that cute monster girls were bad news… but he couldn’t even begin to remember why. Something inside him just insisted on screaming fear and caution. The other three people there with the slime seemed more normal, but he noticed that they also inspired the same feeling of foreboding.
The blond was an elf, and had clearly been on the receiving end of some kind of violence. Her pale skin was leopard-spotted in ugly bruises. Some were soft, brownish scuffs and others… were difficult to look at. The gaunt, almost haunted looking elf wore an expression of total misery, and an outfit of leaves that covered more than he’d initially thought, but was still closer to a bathing suit.
The woman treating the elf seemed in even worse shape, though from neglect, rather than abuse. Her short-ish dark hair was matted and ratty, sticking out at odd angles. He couldn’t quite see her face, but she had thin, squarish, doctor-style glasses, and a lab coat, so well-worn that it was difficult to tell if it had originally been white. She also wore something he couldn’t see well enough to recognize on her left leg… and nothing else. She was essentially, completely naked.
Why does sexy nonsense always happen to me? I'm not even that hot!
["Don't ask questions you don't want answers to, stud. Now go be sociable!"]
The textbox moved behind him and pushed him forward. This is bullshit. This is all bullshit. I don’t fucking care anymore... and look, I'm already here.
He paused there, just in front of the group of girls, but not too close. He was very aware of how they might feel threatened by him, and had eyeballed what seemed like a respectful distance...
“Hi, I’m Dan,” he said, with what he hoped was a winning smile, but was actually closer to a tired smirk. “You ladies come ‘round here often?”
After another awkward pause, and before anyone could reply, a loud “Ping!!” had him flinching away from another textbox:
[Quest complete: (Unalone)]
[Reward: New friends! (Yay!)]
Wait, does that mean-
SPLASH!!
Everyone present looked out to where a medium-small airplane was starting to sink quickly into the ocean, just offshore.
That wasn’t there before. Dan thought, glancing at the quest completion. What are the chances...
Even the silence was stunned, as they watched the abrupt aeronautical device slowly sink… Then Dan heard shouting from the craft, and that jolted him into action. Before he really knew why, he had left his bag, shoes, and shirt with the girls, grabbed his knife, and dived in after the already submerging plane.
Randy Crenshaw, "Do be do be do bah."
Which relevant (to this chapter) dearth affects you most? Pick 3 or draw 10
