“Okay, I’ve looked through your character sheet and a human warlock is fine, the party should be decently balanced” Kaarl said “you didn’t include the backstory though”
“Yeah I forgot to add It as an attachment. I had it in a different file.” Greg replied while looking through notes on his phone. “Give me a second to find it”
Several moments later and an obligatory comment on how he needs to get a new phone, he managed to locate it. “Okay, so it goes like that, ‘Findalin is a son of a minor noble, who one day returns home only to find out his parents were murdered by a demon. He makes a pact with an Old One so that he has power to find the killer and exact his revenge’”
Mark looked at his friend clearly exasperated. “Seriously?” He said while rubbing his temples. “That’s like your fifth character in a row that has dead parents. You’re worse than Disn-”
*BOOM* A loud crashing sound resounded from downstairs. The boys were at Kaarls place preparing for their next D&D campaign when a worryingly loud noise came from the basement.
Oh god please don’t be boiler, Kaarl thought while mentally crossing his fingers.
Greg was the first one to jump up and start running towards the doors. “Fuck, what do you think that was?” He asked his friend who was following right behind him.
“I don’t know but I hope it wasn’t my boiler. I don’t think I have enough saved up to replace that.” Mark lamented. He really hoped he wouldn’t have any problems with the house considering he barely scraped enough money for a down payment on the mortgage.
Both of them quickly approached the doors leading to the basement and carefully opened them while checking for damage. The entrance didn’t show any signs of explosion so there was hope that destruction was contained to the basement alone. Kaarl went down the stairs first while looking around to see what might have caused the explosion like sound. After reaching the bottom he was surprised to see that there was nothing that could indicate what has happened. Everything seemed to be in order and his boiler was working as intended.
Greg stepped down a moment later and after looking around, he also didn’t see anything wrong with the place. “At least it wasn’t the boiler” he said to his unamused friend.
“Yeah, but that kind of sound is usually caused by something and as much as I’m relieved that there doesn’t seem to be any damage, I’m really worried that I don’t know the cause” Kaarl replied while still looking around for any clue as to what might have generated such a loud sound.
After a quick look around Greg walked over to one of the corners of the room and picked something up. “I think we have our culprit” he said while holding remnants of a particularly large firecracker and smiling wryly.
“I’m going to kill that kid one day.” Mark hissed. He looked towards the window and as he suspected, it was open. After looking through it he couldn’t spot anyone, the little brat must have legged it after throwing that thing in.
“Why don’t you talk to his parents about that? Seems like he’s getting bolder by the day.” Greg said interrupting a string of increasingly creative curses that were leaving Kaarls mouth.
“As if they are going to do anything.” Kaarl said trying to calm himself down. “First of all, they would never believe that their little angel could do something like that. Second of all, even if they did, they wouldn’t admit it and do anything. We’re not exactly on good terms with each other. They were hoping to get this house for cheap since it was a foreclosure, but I managed to snatch it by barely going over their budget.”
“Neighborhood politics” Greg snorted, clearly finding the idea amusing.
With the mystery solved and there not being anything left to do down there, they went up to resume their preparation towards their next D&D campaign but before reaching the end of the stairway Greg has received a text and excused himself saying he has to take an earlier shift at work since someone got sick.
“We’ll continue next time, or I’ll just text you my new idea. This time with parents being alive,” he smirked and left through the front door.
As it was barely past 6 Kaarl decided to run a few errands around the house and after that retired in front of TV watching a few shows and fleshing out some parts of the campaign he was going to run. As it was usually the case for him, he ended up dozing off on the couch after a few hours.
Kaarl awoke to the feeling of falling, he hated these kinds of dreams. This time though there was something different about it, that distinct feeling didn’t immediately go away after him waking up. When realization dawned on him his eyes immediately shot open. He was high up in the air, at least several kilometers and was hurtling towards the ground at breakneck speed. After pinching himself several times trying to ascertain that this really wasn’t a dream, an undignified and at the same time absolutely terrified scream has left his lips “AAAA....”.
The situation was terrible so he needed to calm himself quickly or there would be absolutely no chance of getting out of this alive. He surveyed the ground for something that could cushion his fall. Directly beneath him was a body of water, probably some kind of lake. That was probably the worst place to land in since at terminal velocity it would be no different than concrete and even if he managed to survive, he would likely go unconscious and drown.
Around the lake was forest as far as eye could see and mountains on the horizon on one side. Trees were his best bet so he tilted himself to get some horizontal velocity and hopefully manage to hit the land. The point over which he was now wasn’t far from the shore, but without a parachute or a wingsuit this would prove to be a challenge.
With all these preparations there was still one mantra going through his head, please be a dream, please be a dream, please be a dream.
Thankfully, although whether that would change anything was doubtful, he managed to get his landing point to be the forest. Several seconds before hitting the ground Kaarl closed his eyes, crossed his fingers, said his prayers, emptied his bladder and braced for impact.
Before his inevitable demise though he’s heard a terrifying, high-pitched screech and felt a powerful tug at his torso, which felt as if it could have broken several of his bones. It was accompanied by several sharp objects, presumably talons, digging into him and drawing blood.
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Kaarl opened his eyes only to see a tree branch smacking him in the face and disorienting him for a while.
After gathering his wits, likely several seconds later he once again tried to open his eyes, this time successfully, and saw that he was now gliding around ten meters above the treetops at an astonishing pace. He wanted to laugh but the talons were making it hard to even breathe. I’m alive, thank god I’m alive. His happiness was short lived though, as he stretched his neck to see what was carrying him.
It turned out to be a pitch-black bird. A grotesque mix of an eagle and a crow with wisps of dark substance, hopefully smoke but it was too thick and gross looking for that, emerging from its body. Well, that’s not something you see every day, or ever for that matter, he mused to himself contemplating how such a thing could even exist.
The status quo didn’t last long though as the weird bird thing, which was at this point crossing the lake that he didn’t want to hit when freefalling, frantically started trying to gain altitude. It almost made it to the shore as well when an almost transparent object broke the surface of water and speared straight through the dark bird. The avian then in shock and pain released its own prey.
Kaarl who a second ago was speeding through the air has now found himself submerged in water. And although one might find such quickly changing circumstances jarring, he has just escaped the clutches of a massive bird from hell, that was likely going to devour him or feed him to its children, so he was in no position to complain.
On the other hand, the thing that has killed that monster was a resident of the lake he was now in, so it would be prudent to quickly vacate the premises. Luckily, he was only about 50m away from the shore and despite his injuries he could move somewhat freely, so he made a beeline for the solid ground. Surprisingly, he was able to swim without much pain, which he attributed to shock and adrenaline. Kaarl made it ashore in about a minute to the accompaniment of shrill, bone-chilling screeches coming from his former captor who was fighting a brave alas losing fight against the translucent water creature.
Forest started right next to the lake and Kaarl darted inside immediately after getting out of water. He didn’t stop running until he was so exhausted, he couldn’t take another step. Running straight into an unknown forest right after encountering logic-defying monsters might not have been the best idea but at the moment Kaarl was hardly a paragon of common sense and preferred to take his chances with ‘probably there’ monsters rather than the ‘definitely there’ ones.
After his legs refused to take him any further, Kaarl collapsed to the ground with his back against a tree. He took a few moments to calm down and catch his breath, after which he started surveying his surroundings. It looked no different than any regular forest he would be familiar with and at least at first sight there was nothing that looked as if it would pose an immediate threat. Calming himself a little he started figuring out what was going on and what were his options.
Okay so first of all I fell down from the sky because... reasons. Then a giant bird caught me presumably for dinner and was then promptly devoured by some water monster.
“There’s always a bigger fish heh....” Although that might not have been the best quote to use but Kaarl has found it oddly fitting.
So now I’m in the middle of nowhere, presumably not in Kansas anymore, though I’ve never been there so who knows. He smirked trying to cheer himself up.
My immediate concern should be the state of my body so let’s take a look. With that Kaarl took off his clothes and started inspecting his condition. Overall, it was pretty decent considering the alternatives of hitting the ground at terminal velocity or becoming a lunch. There were some bruises, probably a broken rib or two and some superficial puncture wounds on his chest. Thank god that bird seemed to want to eat me while I was still ‘crunchy’ rather than as a paste, so it didn’t squeeze too hard.
I don’t have any water to clean those wounds but I did swim through that lake for a minute or so, so maybe it won’t be necessary. They don’t seem to be bleeding anymore as well so I suppose that’s good. The talon wounds appeared to have slightly healed, at least to the point of not bleeding. Kaarl was pretty sure that’s not how wounds work so he chalked it up to magic being magic and left it at that.
Though now that he thought about it... magic. Those wisps coming out of that bird were clearly unnatural. He raised his hand, pointed his palm towards a tree and said “Fireball”. Suddenly... nothing happened. “Worth a try” he murmured. He wanted to console himself with the fact that temperature seemed to rise up but that was most likely thanks to his face turning red from embarrassment.
Now that the idea of ‘easy magic’ was out, it was time to figure out what’s next. Do I want to start contemplating on how I got here? No, no I don’t. No time for such luxury, survival first. How was it? 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food, or something like that. Oxygen is not a problem and it seems to be pretty warm out here so shelter might not be necessary immediately. For water I could try going back to that lake but I'll leave it as a last resort option considering what lives in it.
With that Kaarl decided that his priority for now will be water. His clothes were still wet but since he fell asleep on a couch without properly going to sleep, he at least wasn’t in his pajamas. Even better considering he tends to sleep only in underwear. Right now his simple t-shirt and slacks were drying on a nearby branch. He decided to keep his underwear and Crocs on in case he needed to make a quick escape but now that he was sitting here for a while and nothing seemed to be attacking him, he took all his clothes off, except shoes. Walking around all wet was just asking for trouble.
Having some time to kill he looked around and managed to find a small clearing, around 2 or so meters across. He decided to take a break there and let his clothes dry in the sun. He already looked through his pockets but unfortunately there was nothing there. Before he dozed off in his house, he was doing some work on his campaign setting so at best his pen and notebook could have gone with him here. Even if they did though, they would be gone during the skydiving part. His phone was unfortunately on the coffee table so it was likely a lost cause.
Looking around and remembering his fall he figured it was at most around noon, so he still had some time to figure things out. Now that he thought, time might work differently wherever he was. Assuming he was even somewhere else and not inside a weird simulation or worse, his own mind.
"Okay, so the working theory for now is ‘a different world’”, although it pained him to admit that that was the best he could come up with and hoped there was some logical explanation to it, for now he had to assume it to be the case. From the staples of isekai stories I've already tried magic.
I don’t seem to have super strength or other enhanced stats either.
There wasn’t anyone to tell me I should defeat the demon king and all that crap.
So, I suppose the last ones from the more obvious choices are identify and status.
Feeling really stupid after his attempt at using magic Kaarl looked at a tree and said “Identify”, to absolutely no effect. Well, I should’ve seen that one coming. Trying ‘status’ has yielded similar results so Kaarl went through the motions of trying the most popular alternatives like ‘menu’, ‘appraisal’ and the like. Before giving up he tried a few on himself and then... “Appraisal” he muttered targeting himself, clearly tired and not expecting any results.
Name: Kaarl Jensyn
Age: 20
Active skills:
* Self-Appraisal X (M)
Passive skills:
* Telekinesis 1 (M)
“BINGO” he said with mad glee. Now we’re getting somewhere.