I open my eyes. Streams of white light, then nothing, then white lights, then nothing. It’s very cold, and the air seems kind of thin. Yeah, I’m mid air, spinning and falling, naked except for a small canvas pouch tied to my wrist by an equally small and flimsy looking string, and it’s probably the middle of the night. My long hair is getting in my face as I spin, which is also not helping.

Quickly I try to spread and arch my body to stabilize, I manage to stop spinning, good start. I’m facing the ground now, I’m very high up, below me I see… a mountain? Basically a mountain ridge spreading quite far, all rocks, the rest is all clouds, like a wide dark gray ocean. I’m not about to land on a thin line of rocks so the clouds it is. Taking a more aerodynamic pose I steer away from the mountain top so I get more time to see what’s under me when I get under the clouds. Hopefully I find a better spot to land, I probably hit terminal velocity a while ago so it’s not like a longer fall will be any worse. I need to look for anything that will slow my collision. A big house would be best I think, or large trees, or just snow if I’m lucky.

Glancing at the sky, there’s a moon that looks quite similar to the one I’d previously worked on, and near it, a weird spot in the sky that’s completely devoid of stars. I have no time to see more.

I finally hit the cloud, it’s quite moist, in a few seconds I’m through. Now, even with the dark vision, there is very little light so I don’t see much, but I’m pretty sure the mountain is still all rock.

There’s not a single spot of light in the distance so probably no houses, I think this is a forest further down the mountain though, so I’ll head there.

Oh yeah that’s a forest alright, the trees look like your regular old pine trees, with branches going down two thirds of the trunks, except they’re all at least 100 meters tall. That’s quite bad, even if I hit them when I get out of the leaves I’ll still get back to terminal velocity before I hit the ground. There are quite a lot of bushes under but I don’t feel like entrusting my life to them.

Anyway, landing on the mountainside isn’t ideal, wouldn't want to roll down, so I follow the forest downhill. Eventually the pine forest gives way to a nice plain, and rolling hills, there’s a few spots with what looks like tightly packed oaks, this is where I’ll land I decide.

Besides the strangely tall trees, the place looks pretty much like any mountain countryside on earth. I get the feeling that I’m falling a bit too fast, my guess is that gravity here is somewhat stronger than on Earth, nothing much but enough for it to be strange, as a former astronaut I’m quite sensitive to these things.

I’m now around 200 meters above this small patch of about 20 trees, I’ll hit them at an angle, once again I spread my body to slow my fall. The landing will be harsh. 100 meters. 50. 10. I change position, feet towards the ground, torso curled and arms around my head. I'll let my legs absorb most of the impact, I need to protect my head at all costs.

Finally I hit the trees. It doesn’t really have time to hurt, I hear branches being destroyed in my wake, barely slowing me down, then I hit the ground.

CRASH

I touch ground feet first and get launched into a tumble. I roll around for what feels like an eternity in bushes and shrubs until all the energy from the landing is dissipated. My legs hurt like a motherfucker, but I’m very alive.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah fuck. And that’s ‘moderately difficult’? What’s very difficult then? Appearing in an active volcano?!”

I’m sprawled on the ground, face under some kind of a dark berry shrub, my legs are thoroughly fucked, I think, the left one is bent like it has three joints and the right one looks like a squiggly line, I’m surprised they even hurt at all, it wouldn’t be a shock if all the nerves in there snapped. More surprising, even, is that my skin didn’t break at all, the top of my body is almost perfectly fine even, only scratches. I don’t see a drop of blood anywhere, not even on my legs. At least I can confirm the perfect body thing was not a scam.

I slowly crawl out of the bush into a relatively flat clearing. First thing first, I need to try and set my bones straight even a little bit, and hope that this perfect body or whatever can help it recover, or I’m in deep shit. But since I survived the fall with such minimal damages, I’m quite hopeful. I didn’t even faint.

Getting my bones in place takes me what feels like a good half hour, to put it simply it hurts like hell, but also less than boiling in outer space, so I’ve been through worse. It’s not as clean as a surgeon could do but that will have to do for now.

Now sitting on the ground on some hills in the middle of nowhere, I finally take some time to breathe.

“Status!”

Nothing happens.

“Menu!”

Nothing.

“Character sheet?”

Still nothing.

I hoped I’d get some cheat like you see in books and games but of course there’s nothing like that. I still have that +1 luck ring though, don’t I?

I open the canvas bag, it handled the fall pretty well considering how cheaply made it looks, it’s not ripped anywhere. Inside of it… no surprise, exactly what’s written on the tin : a long wooden pencil, a small leather bound notebook with about 50 pages of coarse looking paper, a finger sized flint rod, a small golden ring without any special features, and a leather canteen that can probably hold 2 liters of liquid that is half full. Along with all that is a handful of marble sized translucent purple rocks, probably the local currency then.

I drink the water from the canteen in a flash. Good old H2O.

Looking back at the contents of the bag, I can’t help but frown at the obvious lack of a knife, striker or pencil sharpener, but as I got to putting on the ring, I notice something that had somehow not shocked me until now, my nails. Well, calling them nails at this point is ridiculous, these look like murder weapons. I grab a small nearby rock and gently scratch it with my nail. It leaves a deep gash.

“Holy shit.”

Yeah I’m definitely not human anymore. Curious, I do the same to my skin. No mark, not even a faint scratch. I guessed as much but my skin is TOUGH, like harder than rock tough. Yet when I pinch it, it’s just as supple and elastic as it was when I was human, I also feel that when I was high in the sky, the cold didn’t bother me that much. Do I even need clothes at this point?

Back to the nails, getting used to having that on my fingers will probably take some time, but they do seem quite useful. Taking the flint rod, I slide a nail alongside it, creating a lot of sparks. It also carved away like a good fifth of the rod. I should try to be more delicate when I use it for real… Well, now it’s plenty obvious why no knife was included.

“So many things to try, also what about magic, and the blessing, the ‘advanced mana sense’?”

I let out a loud yawn, as a strange two legged, wingless insect walks on my bag, feels the canvas with his curved antennas, and resumes walking, eventually disappearing in some nearby tall grass.

…

I internally debate trying to start a fire but I can’t move that much and besides the still wet branches I knocked down in my fall a few meters from here, there isn’t much around to make one. Placing the bag under my head I close my eyes, I can feel the toll of what I’ve just been through, in but a few seconds, I’m fast asleep.